Why new Shortcuts for "Add Stave above/below to selection"?
Wouldn't it make more sense to leave the old shortcuts (shift+up and down) for "vertical" selecting staves, because for (horizontally) selecting chords, bars/measures the default shortcut is still "shift+right" or "shift+left".
If you are selecting things, using shift and the arrow keys is somehow the standard procedure in most computer programs (and also in Musescore 1.3).
Now you have to use, while selecting some stuff, an extra modifier key (alt) to select things also vertically.
I would suggest to exchange the shortcuts for "diatonic pitch up/down" again with "add stave above/below to selection", as people are still familiar with it (in Musescore 1.3 and most common computer programs like word processors etc).
PS I used MuseScoreNightly-2014-10-19-1708-dc48ff5 for Windows testing this.
GIT commit: dc48ff5
Comments
MuseScore *does* stick to the standard in that once you know the shortcut to *navigate* vertically , adding Shift changes that to *select*. It's just that in MuseScore, navigation vertically is not done and never has been by Up / Down - it's done with Alt+Up/Down. Up/Down by themselves are reserved for changing pitch. That's because music is different from text. Navigation and selection are essentially the only things you ever do with text using cursor keys, whereas with notation, changing pitch is *extremely* important. So it makes sense for the more important/common operation to get the simpler shortcut.
Also, music is different from texd in that vertical navigation in text means is really just a shortcut for a bunch of horizontal movements - one line of text is not semantically different from another. Going up one line is the same as going left 80 (or whatever) characters. Whereas music is fundamentally different - no amount of moving left or right will bring you to another staff. So it woud actually be misleading for up/down to behave as they do in text-based applications.
In any case, if you prefer your shortcuts to be standard rather than more efficient (as they say, and sometimes I even agree, "standard is better than better"), you can customize the MuseScore to get that behavior via Edit / Preferences / Shortcuts.
It's true, Up/Down never was linked to navigation and therefore it is somehow coherent to connect similar actions (triggering pitch) to similar shortcuts. For my taste changing pitch by using Up/Down was always a little bit to easy, as it could happen very accidentally, for example while using left/right to navigate. By the way you could also deduce Shift+Up/Down from the shortcut for horizontal selection (Shift+Left/Right) and it would be conclusive as well (anyway it was standard in Musescore 1.3).
But to avoid long discussions at this point, there are for sure so many preferences in how to do things as there are people using Musescore. Many of them derive from some music notation program and have therefore very different views about ideal (or only accustomed) workflows. I started for example with Capella (very popular in Germany), and did all my input by (computer) keyboard as it really behaved very word-processor-like (there are more similarities between music notation and word processing and music and language as you may think). Now I am a "Mouseman" (except selecting staves, notes...;o), although I would prefer keyboard entry, but never get warmed up to it in Musescore.
There are different focuses in what every user is doing with Musescore (composing, transcribing, copying, arranging...) and what are their needs to do this the best way. I need selection quite often, more often than diatonic pitching up a couple of notes (but I will definitely get used to the new shortcut some day).
This plurality is one aspect, but there are certainly umpteen other factors playing a role (OS, general entry method, Instrument(s) you are playing, complexity of your work...).
Customizing shortcuts is of course a way to get satisfied, but if you are using several computers and operating systems it's possibly a lot of work changing all shortcuts and preferences again and again.
Perhaps there will be sometimes a feature, that you can log in in Musescore (I know you can still log in) and your preferences (incl. shortcuts, styles...) will be synchronized, no matter which OS you are using or which computer you are working with, you always will have the Musescore you are familiar with (hmmm, sounds like a slogan :o)