Adding comments

• Jan 18, 2021 - 14:24

I would like a feature that allowed one to add a comment, sort of like the "Sticky" feature in Adobe Acrobat, or the comments in MS Word. I frequently want to make a "note to self" on some element that I need to come back to at a later date. A comment feature would be very helpful.

Here is a comment from Acrobat. You can move it around to any position on the file.

Screen Shot 2021-01-18 at 9.22.41 AM.png


Comments

In reply to by jeetee

Yes, the plugin's a workaround... Unfortunately, each time you open a document, you must (apparently) manually open the special comment area it creates—and to do that, you must remember there are one or more comments to see. And you can't place the comments in the places they apply to.

I hope this'll be added soon. It seems like basic functionality. Programmatically, it seems pretty simple—just a bit of text on a form, placed at a certain position in the score. Nothing terribly brain-taxing, like actual notation. ;?)

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In reply to by Andy Fielding

The programmatically challenge here is that currently the scoreview is pretty much wysiwyg and exporters (for example SVG and the image capture tool) take all that information and produce their output.
It's not the notes or the anchoring themselves that pose the challenge, it's adjusting the ScoreView to have an additional "comments layer" without it affecting all other current functionality that depends on ScoreView having only the score.

In reply to by Miguel Vicente…

Gosh, I'm always adding notes to charts, reminding me to change this or that, or that I stopped editing at a certain point, or that I need to ask the composer about something... Since I switched to MS, I've had to write this all down separately. Being able to put it right on the score again would be great. I don't see how arrangers can get by without some system like that. (Maybe you guys don't do a lot of arranging?)

In reply to by Andy Fielding

I do a ton of arranging, but I do indeed use pencil and paper a lot during the process as well, not just for these sort of notes but as a basic part of the process of arranging. I also simply add staff text within MuseScore when I want to make notes to myself. I have a predefined staff text with yellow background on a custom "Annotations" palette to make it really easy to add and identify such "sticky notes". They stick out like a sore thumb so they are easy to delete later.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

This sounds very useful. I can create a text style (Format/Style/Text styles) but can't figure out how to get the background to be colored yellow (or whatever). Changing the color affects the font, not the background. I see there is a 'highlight' option under Frame, but even if I change that to yellow nothing happens.

For me it'd also a nice new feature to add. There is Marc's workaround with staff text. I'm also using lines with text to indicate from where to where my note/question/remark applies.
But a separated type of text could be nice. With its own print status: print the score with/without the comments.

In reply to by Andy Fielding

You bet.
I often have multiple projects going at a time, then get diverted for weeks and return. At that point, it takes some studying to figure out what it was I thought I wanted to redo or finish... or why.
A notes system with icons at selected locations would be a brilliant productivity enhancer.
In the meantime, I probably need to take screen shots and plop them into OneNote or something. ... and remember that they are there to reference.

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