When entering text edit mode by double-clicking a text item, all of the item's text should be selected
Reported version
3.5
Type
Ergonomical (UX)
Frequency
Once
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project
Musescore 3.5.2, on Windows 10.
Currently, when double-clicking a text item on the canvas, MuseScore will position the text cursor under the mouse without selecting any text. Double-clicking a text item, and then starting to type on the keyboard, will insert new text rather than replacing the existing text. In order to replace the existing text, the user needs to triple-click instead.
Inserting new text is almost always undesirable when editing small text items like dynamics, chord symbols and fingerings. I suggest that the canvas should automatically "select all" when entering text edit mode for this type of text item.
For consistency, it may also be sensible to "select all" for larger text items such as stave text and page titles.
Comments
No, the current behavior is exactly what is needed most of the time, adding/inserting or deleting single characters, esp. for staff- and system text, lyrics, title, composer, lyricist
I agree that the existing behaviour may be desirable for some types of text item. This is why my first suggestion is to perform the "select all" action only for chord symbols, dynamics, fingerings, and similar items.
I'd agree for fingerings, and probably for dynamics and also rehearsal marks too, but chord symbols is in between, sometimes this, sometimes the other behavior is more wanted
In reply to I agree that the existing… by hiddenhare
The behaviour shouldn't change for dynamics. My most common reason to edit a dynamic would be to add text to create things like "poco. f" or "subito. p" etc. What use cases would require the whole dynamic to be selected?
Hmm, good call
triple click is the workaround ;-)
Sorry, my mistake - I forgot that MuseScore draws a distinction between the letter "f" and the "forte" symbol, and so on. For that reason, I agree that this suggestion probably shouldn't apply to dynamics.
I'm generally not in favor of having semantics for selection different depending on the specific type of text. And given that Ctrl+A or triple click is easy enough, I'm not that comfortable with the change at all. Personally I'm much more likely to just want to change the text - fix a typo, add new info, whatever - than completely replace it. Like, probably about 10 times as likely - replacing the entire text is pretty rare. But it's worth discussing on the forum to see if there if there is widespread support for the idea.