Better way to show current position in score

• Nov 29, 2020 - 01:45
Reported version
3.5
Type
Graphical (UI)
Frequency
Few
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project
MuseScore

There are a few threads related to this, for example:
https://musescore.org/en/node/14387
https://musescore.org/en/node/165936

The main problem is that when looking at the score it is not visually obvious where the current position is. For example, see the screenshot. It's a little like an unwanted version of "Where's Waldo?", where you need to closely examine the whole score to find the little speck of blue showing the current position.

See the attached screenshot for an example.

My suggestion would be to add a light yellow background to the the current slice of the current measure that spans the whole height of the measure. There are lots of options for this, even having a dark border around the measure containing the current position would help.

OS: macOS 10.16, Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (64-bit): 3.5.2.312126096, revision: 465e7b6

Attachment Size
example.png 519.21 KB

Comments

• Dec 22, 2020 - 21:45

I'm going to try to explain what happens in Finale, just as a comparison.

  • In selection mode, nothing is highlighted, giving no indication of where a playhead would appear unless I were to look in the "Playback Controls" box (which, by the way, only gives a numerical indication of position that is sometimes misleading, especially when there's a pickup measure/multiple measure groupings).
  • In Simple Entry mode (analogous to Note Entry mode in MuseScore), a vertical line and a ghost note/rest indicate where you're about to place a note/rest and what note/rest you're about to place (with properties such as length/re-pitching, pitch alterations, ties, tuplets, grace notes). The note you just placed is highlighted in purple (the entire note is highlighted unless you expanded a chord, in which case only the notehead is highlighted), which allows you to make changes to its duration/accidentals/etc. Again, this gives no indication of where a playhead would appear.

> light yellow background

I would caution against using colors that would not provide enough contrast against the background.

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