Entered Hyphen is not visible

In the past 2 hours a lot of changes have been commited, including some dealing with lyrics dash, so please test with the latest nightly (once available for download, in an hours or so).

Also I've been discussing that issue with Marc earlier, about a week ago: in pretty dense scores there may not be enough space for such a dash, and also no dash would be needed.

Anyway, with the lasted (self-)built version I see dashes even if 'adding less stretch' to the extreme... so this might have been fixed.

A fresh build should be available for download now.

Currently, this is expected by design: there is no room for the dash between the two 16th's.

The previous behaviour of widening the distance between the notes to fit the dash went against common engraving practice (it also adversely affects the horizontal layout of other staves) and has been removed recently.

I know this is not 100% perfect yet, as the small space between the two syllables should be completely removed, but we are approaching incrementally (for the moment being, one of the two syllables could be manually nudged to reclaim this space).

You can nugde the syllables left and right a bit (0.5sp each is enough I think), via Inspector, to make room for the dash. Or put less than 12 measures into one line, with a system break after 8 measure, I see the dash again:

It's important to realize that while any particular edition of a Mozart piece may or may not have dashes, those sort of details are normally taken care of by the editor and/or engraver, not the composer. So it is probably not accurate to assume Mozart "intended" there to be dashes in those particular cases. And standards change over time; just necause they might have been used in the 19th century doesn't mean a modern typesetting program should necessary do the same *by default*. Of course, it should be *possible* to get them if you want them, but the defaults should reflect *modern* engraving standards.

Anyhow, it *is* possible to get the dashes to appear, by manually separating the notes themselves (adding leading space to the second note via the Inspector). This works better than trying to move the lyrics, since the note spacing algorithm currently respaces the notes when you move syllables. That was a change I made quite a while ago that could bear re-examination.

Personally, I still feel an option to automatically add sufficient space should be considered.

@RobertScharpf: if you have philological concerns, we are lucky: the Mozart autograph of this aria can be easily obtained from the Web; this is an excerpt including the point you quoted:

NOT FOUND: 1

It is easy to check that Mozart text is different from most editions currently available today by far more than a hyphen added or removed: the clef (the original is in tenor clef), the beaming and so on. Should the score have been somewhat earlier (say, Telemann or Bach), there would have been significant changes in the management of accidentals too.

It can be compared with the Breitkopf & Härtel 1880 edition from the Mozart Werke collection:

NOT FOUND: 2

Note that "dal-la" has a hyphen, but several other multi-syllabic words have not (di-pende, piace, rende, ...), according there is enough room for it or not (note also that the clef is still tenor clef and the hyphens are actually dashes on the base line...)

In fact, the conventions for this specific details have changed rather little from the times of Gardano and Phalèse (at least until computers and software messed up with engraving practices and traditions in exchange for the clarity and the ease of data entry they allow): the text should written as it is usually written -- without dashes -- as long as syllables remain -- more or less -- under their respective notes. Older times allowed a greater flexibility in this "more or less"; the more we approach our times, the less this flexibility.
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Should you really need to include the hyphen -- for whatever reason; it is ultimately your decision --, my suggestion is to increase the stretch of the whole score or of this specific measure until enough room is inserted between each note, rather than move a single chord; the former would keep the horizontal spacing consistent across at least the whole measure, the latter would not.

Thanks,

M.

Words/syllables with virtually zero space between them and missing hyphens between some (but not all) syllables make a new hymn score look confusing as well as ugly to Joe Pew. Stretching out the overall spacing doesn't always fix the problem syllables.

So I'm wasting a lot of time scrutinizing every syllable in every verse in every hymn score to find and shift every problem chord individually. GAH!

If you've already added global options to add enough space around syllables to clearly separate every syllable and display every hyphen, even on shorter-duration notes, please tell me where to find them, while I still have some hair attached to my head.

If you haven't, please do.

Thanks, and Happy New Year to all.
Linda

If you prefer to have space for hyphens added automatically, the next version of MuseScore will indeed support such an option, and it's enabled by default. Meanwhile, instead of stretching the score, you can increase the parameter Style / General / Measure / Minimum note distance, which woukld probably be more effective overall. A setting of 0.4sp or so should suffice to make sure there is normally enough room for a hyphens, with probably less adverse effect on spacing than stretching. Doubtless the optimum values will differ from score to score depending on lots of factors, so some experimentation may be in order.

I wouldn't assume the average person always needs to see the hyphens, though. As mentioned above, it really is pretty common in the publishing industry to omit them in crowded passages. So most of us have seen plenty of music published without them and never given it a second thought.

Thanks, Marc. I'll try playing with minimum note distance.

Yeah, if there's one thing I've learned from this forum, it's that everyone's niche involves different ways of doing things. I had gathered from the previous comments that some folks were accustomed to seeing lyrics without hyphens. That's why I was hoping for the hyphen thing to be an option I could choose, not to be the one-and-only way to do it.

As I mentioned, I'm working on hymn scores. All the modern hymnals I use, including one published 2015, make a point of displaying every hyphen (and commonly shift surplus space from long notes to shorter notes whose lyrics would otherwise be overly crowded, which is evidently a no-no in more elite circles).

Anyway, for me, it will save a lot of time to have that new update.

Cheers.