Colouring lines
This one is driving me crazy - or crazier than I was already.
There is a fairly clunky way to get horizontal bars of colour using lines, and the Inspector in MU3, and these can be used for annotation or highlight purposes.
I could not get this to work in MU4, so I did the following.
- Exported a file with a horizontal line in MU4 [which I could not change or configure] as a MusicXML file.
- Reimported that file into MU3.
- Reformatted the line using the Inspector in MU3 - making it wider and coloured.
- Trimmed the file to remove unwanted material for showing here.
- Saved the file in "normal" MU format.
- Reloaded the file into MU4.
- Now MU4 doesn't have the Inspector, but has a Properties tool - no doubt accessible by a button or key shortcut.
- Selected the bar - which is now visible and wide enough to be dragged around.
- Activated the Properties tool from the menubar at the top of the screen [Macos Ventura 13.4.1
- Now it seems to be possible to change aspects of the visible band - setting colours etc.
- See image 1 which shows the colour settings.
- Then go back to the score - but the colour changes have not worked at all. They have no effect.
- See image 2 which shows the final result - in white. The colours have not worked at all.
The test file is shown here - test3 version - to be loaded into MU4.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| image 1.png | 664.13 KB |
| image 2.png | 650.6 KB |
| COLOURED BARS-test3.mscz | 24.51 KB |
Comments
The same method that works in MU3 should work in MU4. Properties is indeed simply the new name for what was the Inspector, and the same shortcut opens and closes it as before.
When I load your score into MU4 (4.1 specifically), the line is pink just as shown in the Properties panel in your image. But I think the inverted colors don't work in the score and that's why you aren't seeing it as such. See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/16506.
In reply to The same method that works… by Marc Sabatella
A couple of points. I found it almost impossible to get the Properties to work the first few times I tried, hence going via the MU3 Route and back. Maybe I would find it easier now - I'm not sure. How do you get to the Properties panel(s) on your systems? That may be something different on Macs, The only way I seem to be fairly sure of is via the system style menu right at the top of the screen. I thought there might be menus - context or otherwise within the MU4 panels, but if there are I can't find them, or they are inaccessible.
Secondly - on my system the colours do not work. It appears that they do, having gone to the Properties panel, but the end result is as I showed in the images - with only a white colour for the wide band.
Whether this is a Mac thing or not I can't say yet. I could try rebooting my system and seeing if that fixes the issue. If you're seeing a pink line for that score, then if my system is working in a similar fashion to yours, it should be pink if I download it back from this site.
I'll look into this again as if you have seen it work with my file, then maybe it will work with some local fix - which I don't yet know about.
Ah - re inverted colours - you mean with my now preferred white on black colours. I'll look into that - though after a few months I really have got used to the white on black, which I now much prefer for working with the computer displays.
If that is the case, then it would be good if that could be fixed too.
Thanks for checking this far.
In reply to A couple of points. I found… by dave2020X
Just like the Inspector in MU3, the Properties panel is normally open by default unless you previously closed it. Just like in MU3, if you did previously close it, you can reopen in via the View menu or the shortcut F8. It's no different between MU3 and MU4 and no different between Mac or any other system. Not sure what you mean by "system style menu", but if you mean the View menu on the standard menu bar, yes, that is where the View menu has been located on all versions of MuseScore on all supported OS's since the very beginning.
As I explained above, it's the inverted colors you have enable that don't currently support color. That setting was specifically added to aid with particular visual impairments and it isn't clear how colors should be handled; more research into that field is needed. Once there is a scientific consensus on the best way to handle that, I'm sure it can be implemented easily.
In reply to Just like the Inspector in… by Marc Sabatella
OK - there are still issues here.
In non inverted mode I can see and amend colours. However unlike MU3, I can't set transparency - so if I place the bar over a stave the notes are obscured.
I think you are maybe not so familiar with the Macs, which have another menu at the very top of the screen. This can be, and is used, by some applications. Attached is an example of what MuseScore provides.
and with the drop down
However some programs, like MuseScore, also have their own control panels. When MU4 opens up there is indeed a panel for the Properties panel, but it is possible to Undock this, and maybe that then gets lost in the window systsem. I could not find any way in a previous session to get the Properties menu visible or to work, until I finally tried the very top Apple level screen menu.
Very probably the keys you mention may recover the Properties panel, but I don't remember all the fn keys, and mostly don't use them anyway. Some probably conflict with MacOS keys which is another reason not to use them. When one can't find how to get things done, then is not the time to be worrying about fn keys - but that's maybe just my opinion. Very definitely parts of MU4 do go AWOL from time to time on a MacOS display - which is sadly not too uncommon.
As it happens, the F8 [fn+F8] combination does toggle the Properties display on MacOS, but some of the other function keys - for example F9 - do not work in the way that MU4 might hope.
In reply to OK - there are still issues… by dave2020X
I am familiar with the fact that macOS places the menu at the top of the screen, yes. That's not "another" menu - it is the menu. This is not a new thing at all, and nothing about that menu has changed between MU3 and MU3. The View menu remains in the same exact location it has always been, both on macOS and on other systems. On macOS it has always been on the top of the screen, on most other OS's it has always been attached to the window instead (a few Linux systems give you either option).
As for the opacity - indeed the new color picker widgets are not always good about showing transparency options. Sometimes the custom color option might display it. There's an open issue about that - see https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues/13652. Meanwhile, the better solution is to instead hit the "To back" button in the Properties panel (a nice improvement over the old numeric stacking order in MU3) to send the line behind the staff lines. This will make the notation easier to read anyhow.
As for whatever issue you are seeing with function keys not doing what you expect - or any other potential issue - please start a new thread and describe the precise steps to reproduce the problem, then we can understand and assist better. But again - these shortcuts haven't changed. F8 and F9 have always been the shortcuts for Inspector/Properties and Palettes.