Is there a direct way to add an SVG image to a custom palette?

• Oct 23, 2020 - 06:54

With ease I’ve successfully created a number of custom palettes in MuseScore 3.5.0.28537 (on MacOS):

  • a palette with about 70 jazz chord diagrams
  • a palette that contains numerous symbols dragged in from the Master Palette>Symbols
  • and my favorite: a collection my most frequently used items from various palettes. What a time saver. Wonderful option!

Now I want to:

a. add some SVG images to MuseScore's Noteheads palette
b. create a new palette that will host numerous SVG items such as custom drawn arrows and strum symbols.

Unfortunately I haven’t found instructions in the Handbook for directly adding SVGs to a palette.

I’ve seen forum discussions that describe dragging an SVG file directly onto the palette. So I tried that, without success. When doing so I saw a green + sign once I positioned the cursor over the palette, so things looked promising. But on mouseUp MuseScore never deposited the SVG object in the palette.

Eventually I managed to get an SVG object into a palette:

  • I dragged the SVG file onto a note, rest or frame in a score
  • from there I could sometimes Command-Shift drag the SVG from the score to the palette. But duplicating that success was tricky—and I still don’t know the secret.

Am I overlooking an obvious means for directly adding SVGs to a palette?

Ideally dragging an SVG file from any directory folder to the palette would suffice. If that's not currently possible, please consider this a request.

Thanks!

scorster


Comments

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Yes! :). I want to add the '2 eighth notes = triplet with a quarter and eight note' 'symbol' to many of my scores. I already found how to drag it from an outside application into musescore, but having it in a palette is so much easier. When I hover over the item in the palette, I see the 'swing symbol' tooltip I added in the inspector.

The cell in the palette shows as empty, so you need to know where it's 'hidden'. Having a 'display name' in the element would avoid this. Or is there a way to add a name that would appear in the palette?

Thanks,
Luc.

In reply to by jeetee

Thanks! I was looking at what I could change in the inspector (which is about how the element is displayed), and not at the properties of the element in the palette. It looks just like I want it now.

Yes Marc, thanks, that's why I only saw a blank cell in the palette at first. When I add it to a note or rest, it appears right above the staff, by changing the offsets in the properties window, the image is now in the middle of the cell.

Yes guys. That's what I described in the original post:

  • I added the SVG to the score (via drag and drop onto a frame, note or rest)
  • then (under MacOS) I Command-Shift dragged it to the palette ... but with mixed success!

The questions raised were:

  • Are the described steps documented somewhere in the Handbook?
  • Are there some issues that make this approach unreliable?
  • Forum posts suggest that others have been able to drag SVGs directly to a palette. Was that ever an option in prior releases and perhaps deprecated?

scorster

In reply to by scorster

> Forum posts suggest that others have been able to drag SVGs directly to a palette. Was that ever an option in prior releases and perhaps deprecated?

No.
Images (whether SVGs or other image types) always need to be inserted into the score first and then Ctrl-Shift-dragged into a palette.

In reply to by jeetee

Thanks jeetee,

You always add clarity to discussions.

A Handbook entry like the following would have clarified the situation for me and saved me some poking around:

"The addition of an image to a palette is a two step process. An image such as a vector image (SVG) or a raster image (jpg, png, etc.) must be inserted into a score before your can Ctrl-Shift drag it into a palette. "

scorster

In reply to by scorster

Done. It is a Wiki, so don't hesitate to add such small clarifications.
The only thing to keep in mind when adding, is that the handbook is mostly just about what a tool/feature does and how it works; not about how/in which situation to use it.

In reply to by jeetee

Meant to mention ...

Since we cannot drag images (SVG or raster formats) directly to a palette then the MacOS "pending deposit" icon should not appear when the "loaded" cursor hovers the palettes.

The icon on the left appears on hover. And that led me to conclude I was performing an allowable function, so I wondered why it wasn't working.

macOS file drag cursors.png

In reply to by scorster

I think it doesn't really check for what you drop onto it, it just shows that this is a place where things could be dropped. As I've just tried to highlight this response in my browser and dragged it onto a palette, it also shows this behavior.

Feel free to log this into the issue tracker as a UI/UX bug

Hello,
i use MS 3.5.2 AppImage on Linux Mint 20.
Here, it is possible to drag an svg with STRG+SHIFT to a palette. It is there, but sometimes nothing is displayed in the litte palette space. It can be dragged back to the score. Maybe the scaling in the palette rectangle is to wrong!?
Greetings, Pentatonus

In reply to by Pentatonus

> it is possible to drag an svg with STRG+SHIFT to a palette.

Hi Pentatonus,

You mean, you can drag an image from a score to a palette. Right?

> sometimes nothing is displayed in the little palette space.

Thanks for confirming. That may be the crux of the intermittent issue I mentioned. And because the cell appeared to be empty I didn't try to use it. I'll look into this further.

If I scale and SVG in the score and then drag it to the palette it appears at the score-scaled size (and often clipped) in the palette, but at least it's visible. Of course, there are cell properties that can rectify so the entire image fits in the cell.

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