Musescore Songbook changes line breaks
Hi, and apologies for posting an Android question here, but I can't find any forums (fora?) on the Android site - only the ability to join a group, which isn't what I want.
I've laid out my songs (jazz standards) neatly - 4 bars per line - in Musescore on a Win8 PC (standard Musescore defaults for all fonts etc).
When I come to view the songs in Musescore Songbook (either from mscz files on DropBox or from the same files on a memory stick) they're all over the place - 3, 5, 6, 8 and yes, sometimes 4, bars per line.
Is there any way Musescore Songbook can be forced to observe the 'newlines' in the mscz files?
Regards, jabu4711
Comments
Did you use system breaks? https://musescore.org/en/node/36151
The group/forum to join reg. Songbook on Android woule be https://musescore.com/groups/musescore-android
In reply to Did you use system breaks? by Jojo-Schmitz
Hi, and - again - many thanks for that very fast reply. I've not always used system breaks (specifically line breaks) but Musescore Songbook doesn't seem to observe them when they're there - Marc Sabatella's reply would seem to suggest that it's a known problem which, given the variety of sizes and resolutions etc of Android tablets, might not be that easy to overcome.
Thanks too for the link to the Android group/forum; I've had another look at it; there seem to be no discussions in progress, and - sorry to be thick - I don't see a 'start discussion' button (or equivalent) anywhere, so not at all sure how to make a comment or start a new topic.
Best wishes, jabu4711
This is unfortunately a known limitation. The problem is, the app is designed to support multiple different font sizes as well as different screen resolutions, so the breaks that made sense when designing for a fixed-size staves printed on a fixed-size piece of paper don't necessarily make sense any more. Of course, if you *happen* to have a screen large enough and of similar aspect ratio as a piece of paper, and you happen to to have set up the staff sizes in the score to match one of the staff size options provided in the app, it might be nice to keep the line breaks to emulate the printed version. Or have some sort of option to attempt to automatically calculate what stasff size would be necessary to render about the same. Anyhow, that feature is not implemented. I'd like to see it too, but I recognize the inherent issues involved with doing so.
In reply to This is unfortunately a known by Marc Sabatella
Yup - this is one of my biggest problems with the app.
I usually run it on a Samsung P90 - it has a 12" screen so can handle A4 sized layout with ease, and I find it very irritating that my carefully prepared page turns are completely nerfed :(
In reply to This is unfortunately a known by Marc Sabatella
Many thanks for that Marc; I appreciate that the wide variety of screen sizes and resolutions available must pose serious problems, but I expect someone will come up with a solution quite soon - maybe something fairly crude like the app having a few default display options (fonts / font sizes) from which the user can choose one which he/she believes is the closest match to his/her screen size / resolution etc.
While I'm writing, may I say how hugely grateful I am for your brilliant 'Jazz Improvisation Primer'. I downloaded it many years ago when (at an age when I should have known better) I bought my first saxophone and took the first steps on the improvisation journey. My copy is very worn and thumbed now, with many scribbled notes, but I return to it regularly, invariably finding that something which I hadn't understood before is now making total sense. It's beautifully paced, and structured in a way that I've found more useful than any other book on improvisation. So, again, many thanks.
Best wishes
jabu4711
In reply to Many thanks for that Marc; I by jabu4711
You're welconme - always nice to see people who know me from that other world too :-)
Meanwhile, we'll all keep our fingers crossed that some sort of support for keeping line breaks makes its way into the mobile apps at some point. I know I've raised it as an issue - really, the blocking issue for me in termns of trying to use the app on a gig.
In reply to You're welconme - always nice by Marc Sabatella
We are working on a solution. Currently MuseScore apps completely ignore line breaks and page breaks and try to fit as much music as possible on the page. We believe it's a useful feature in many situation (less page to turn). However, we agree that it would be good to keep at least the line breaks, page breaks might depends on your screen size. So, with 2.0 and 2.0.1, we will work on a solution to display something closer to the original mscz file.