Slurs forced above staff when extending over more than one measure

• Dec 22, 2020 - 19:14
Reported version
3.5
Type
Functional
Frequency
Once
Severity
S4 - Minor
Reproducibility
Always
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project

For as long as I can see, we have tried to implement a rule in slur layout where "long" slurs are forced above the staff. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but our definition of "long" is bad - "anything over one measure in duration" is how we implement it. In reality, this is a pretty subjective determination and we shouldn't make it automatically. Or at least, we should have a more sensible threshold, one based on length of the slur in sp units, not on duration in fractions.


Comments

Status active PR created

https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/7148

Note that I am not necessarily recommending this change for 3.6, at least not as is. It will have an effect on existing scores, as quite a few slurs will likely be impacted. Most in a positive way, but for some it might result in more vertical space being required between staves. We could consider adding a style option or some other compatibility handling.

Status PR created fixed

Fixed in branch 3.x, commit 7681e67254

_fix #314665: don't force "long" slurs above the staff

Resolves: https://musescore.org/en/node/314665

We have code to force "long" slurs above the staff,
which isn't a terrible idea, but we're way too heavy-handed about it.
Anything more than one measure in duration is considered long.

Since this determination is best made subjectively by the user,
the code here removes this check.
However, it will doubtless have an efrect on existing scores.
In most cases, a good one, as slurs that were erroneously forced up
will now be where they really belong, below the staff.
In some cases, though - especially truly long slurs
like ones extending for most of the system -
it could cause too much extra space below the staff.

Ultimately we could consider adding a style setting to control this.
And having the default different for older versus newer scores._