My whole mscz file messed up

• Oct 30, 2014 - 07:41

The text has been completely mixed up when using Musescore 2.0 beta - no alignment features, parts of the text missing, moved to the wrong places.

I am including both the orginal mscz and the pdf file created accurately with musescore 1.3 2½_04.mscz 2½_04.pdf

Attachment Size
2½_04.mscz 63.17 KB
2½_04.pdf 173.01 KB

Comments

Hey avronp,

Upon a first check, it looks like you have made maximum use of custom layouting and typesetting features in MuseScore 1.3. MuseScore 2.0 is nearly a complete rewrite of the rendering engine packed with many improvements. This comes with a cost however, meaning that it will break scores which used a high level of customisation like yours.

Having said this, have you read this chapter in the 2.0 handbook: http://musescore.org/en/node/17915#opening-1-x-scores-in-musescore-2-0

In reply to by Thomas

Hi Thomas,

I am a drummer so many of the aspects I require are notational features used by drummers, eg the handing used, hidden notes (which to be missing now), accents, etc.. That's why it might seem to require a lot of rendering features, which were available in 1.3.

I am going to leave it for now because 1.3 gives me the features I need and which I don't want to begin to play around with. I am in the middle of writing a drum book in musescore, as you might have seen from the accompanying mscz/pdf that I sent, where there is a lot of text and where the focus is on publishing and not on playing, and I don't really have the time to begin redoing layouts and making changes.

I might come back to the version 2.0 after completing the book. The first thing I noticed in 2.0 with the file I opened was the omission of some previous text-editing features, as well as some missing characters. It would be a pity if the new text rendering omitted or changed the format since these are pretty standard features in most text editors.

Thanking you once again for you super efficient reply.

Avron Polakow

In reply to by avronp

By the time you finished your book, we may have released a new beta of 2.0 which comes with many fixes. It would be great to receive a new update how it works out for you. Good luck with publishing the book!

In reply to by avronp

Hidden notes are still possible and easier than ever - just press "V" to toggle visibility of whatever is selected. As far as I know the text other features you need are still there too, but the specifics may have changed, so indeed, there might be a bit of a learning curve to get used to the new improved system, and probably best to wait until you finish this project.

In reply to by avronp

For your next publishing project, I would strongly advised to use a proper tool to do the text editing (like a professional desktop publishing software, or a least a word processor) and use MuseScore to do the sheet music related work. It would make the whole process smoother.

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

Holy crap, I just looked at the actual file :-). I'd say you did an amazing job of pushing MuseScore 1.3 text facilities to the limits to produce a very nice looking result. But indeed, next time, better to use something that specializes in text for the main text, and use MuseScore to create the musical excerpts.

That said, things aren't *that* far off. The main issue is all the places where you created text frames and then let the text extend below the bottom of the frame, then relied on the first staff to be positioned below this. This makes the layout too dependent on the size of the text frame, the margin settings, etc. Instead, it would have been better to have extended the text frame to encompass the text, with the music upper margin then reset to the default (or some other reasonably small) value. Had the file been structured this way, it would have been less "fragile". Something to keep in mind for next time, I guess.

Aside from that, the main things with text I saw were the "2 1/2" being cut off in the title (not sure what's up with that) and a difference in rendering of some of the symbols on page 3. Considering how much you are pushing the text features of MuseScore, I'd say that's better than I might have expected, actually. There is also bad rendering of three-line drums stave; that is something we know has changed incompatibly and so far have not figured out what to do about it.

FWIW, 2.0 represents a *huge* change over 1.3 in a lot of internals - text handling being one, basic note layout being another. A change this big doesn't come along every day; and 2.0 has been in the works literally since the release of 0.9.6 over four years ago. It's actually pretty unlikely we'll see another change this significant in basic rendering.

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

I actually have worked much in publishing and used most of all the software applications used in the printing business for publishing books, newspapers, etc. as far back as the Ventura days. But I think Musescore is far better for music publishing, a field which has its own unique requirements. Music books or manuscripts don't have complicated layout or colour requirements but are more an balance between text and notes.

What struck me about Musescore 1.3 is how well it is a One-Stop Solution which integrates all the features required for publishing music, the excellent results obtained, and the perfect rendering in pdf. Using different software applications to obtain the same results would be a pain.

The text editing obviously required a lot of juggling on my part, especially as far as positioning and text appearance. But having played around with it a lot I feel I have obtained the results I have been aming at, even though there might be better ways of doing some of the things I did. Even little things like unusual fonts (like the clock in Wingdings font) were rendered well. Some things required unusual tricks, e.g. embedding a music phrase within text. I do this by creating an image and then embedding it at the text position. This also has the additional advantage of not being played if the mscz file is being used to listen to the music.

One small suggestion: in the symbols palette of musical notation it would be nice to have a metronome symbol.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.