Diagonal lines get flattened

• Jul 31, 2022 - 21:43

I mostly use MuseScore to create barbershop sheet music. we commonly use a dashed diagonal line to show when the melody is passed from the lead voice to another part and then back. I can't figure out when or why this is happening but I frequently have my dashed lines I create suddenly change to be horizontal and smaller. Why do they change? Is this a bug? I also cannot seem to control the anchor points so that wouldn't help.

I uncheck the automatic placement box for all of these lines I create and I also notice the ones that are broken have the box checked again so that probably has something to do with it.

I'm using the latest version on a Mac Big Sur 11.6

I attached some images to show the lines broken (in the wrong place) as well as correct.

Thanks,
Mindy Engelberg

Attachment Size
correct lines.png 338.59 KB
broken lines.png 241.94 KB

Comments

Try a note anchored line from the Add menu. I'm not sure if they can be made dashed or dotted though and I'm not at my PC to experiment.

In reply to by mindyengelberg

On the other hand, if you did see it there, it might not have been obvious just by looking how it differed from the other line. That's actually why it never got added. Not a great reason I know, but anyhow, there it is.

As for why the layout starts from the center - no great one there either. The whole feature kind of snuck in under the radar a few years back.

Why is the note anchored line default placement from center of note to the center of the other note? Do people really put lines like that? aren't glissandi etc usually next to the note not right on top of it?

In reply to by mindyengelberg

Note that there is a separate glissando line in the Arpeggios and Glissandi pallet. That has a default placement that is not the centre of the notehead. However, that has the advantage or disadvantage (depending on context) of playing a glissando.

Why is the note anchored line default placement what it is? I'm not sure how much insight into that precise question - why? - is provided by these issues in the tracker provide but it does indicate that the issue is at least above the horizon.
#327928: remove non-functional "Allow Diagonal" property for Note-Anchored Line
#327969: Line end-anchor position to chord edge instead of segment duration.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Ah yes! Actually the gliss does span staves (e.g. on piano) but not instruments and as I understand it the OP was looking for something that links one voice part to another - possibly on a different stave.

Hmm? could a two stave barbershop score be configured as a single instrument to allow cross staff glisses? There's probably some disadvantage that would need to be worked around and which may require more work than just adjusting the note-anchored line endpoints.

The long term fix should be to allow the note-anchored line to have its start and end point offsets defined as a a style.

In reply to by SteveBlower

I was just using gliss as an example because I figured that was the most common usage of a note anchored line. Personally, I'm just using it for melody transfer dashed lines. But I can't think of a single use case where the default placement of a line should touch the note heads. It's inconvenient because I have to move it every time I create one.

In reply to by mindyengelberg

The proper tool should be the note anchored line - but that seems to have less than optimal default positioning as you have discovered. i was exploring whether the only other note-anchored line, the gliss, offered a reasonable workaround. If you are just concerned with appearance, it probably does, but it seems there are serious shortcomings if you also want the full playback facilities.

Whatever, the problem with the note-anchored line is registered in the issue tracker. Perhaps it will irritate someone sufficiently that they will scratch that itch and fix it. Perhaps that someone could be you.

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