want ability to nudge items by keyboard as opposed to requiring drag

• Feb 18, 2011 - 04:08
Type
Functional
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Status
closed
Project

A few elements can be moved by keyboard, but most cannot. Would love ability to nudge text, hairpins, and other elements using cursor keys.


Comments

As would I too!

To elaborate a little, I would also like that:

1) Amount: Each arrow key press moves the item of a fixed, known and rational amount of spatium (step), for instance 1/2 spatium or 1/4 spatium. Currently, the items which can be nudged are moved of an irrational part of spatium, probably also depending on view scale and, possibly, not the same for different items.

2) Vertical: Items 'belonging' to a staff (directly -- as staff text or time signature -- or indirectly -- like an accidental belonging to a note belonging to a staff --) 'snap' vertically to a step grid relative to the staff. This to help keeping vertical alignment of several nudged items of the same kind.

3) Horizontal: I do not have a clear idea about this point. Probably, items without a visible parent should snap horizontally to steps around their original position; items with a visible parent (for instance, accidentals, ornaments, articulations belonging to a note) should snap to steps around the parent position.

Thanks,

M.

Hello,

Just some thoughts, to illustrate I would like to throw in the following use-case:
Add something like f,g,a# as one chord, add something like a sfozato to make things more interesting :)
Add 'Fingering 1' to G (I know this does not make much sense but it shows my point best :) ) The G fingering will vanish behind the F and the stem (this would be another issue..).
Pressing Ctrl+E I can move the '1' horizontally with the cursors to some place I can find it again, but not vertically.

I can also select the Sfozato and press Ctrl+E (or double click), but the only visual feedback that I am in Edit mode is the text in the status bar (versus a rectangle around the text with the Text Edit Mode). I can move it around in edit mode (but not outside edit mode), but the Reset position shortcut (Ctrl+R) only works outside edit mode.
To see where an item is anchored to, I need to drag it around.

Now I would like to arrange the three fingerings below the chord/sfozato instead of in front of the notes, but getting them exaclty on one line is not that easy :) (I could of course add a single fingering text and write '123' into it as a workaround)

So.. :) What I would find helpful would be
- In Edit mode, a dot/cross/plus-symbol at the parent anchor (or all anchors for things like slurs), to see that I am in edit mode and to see which item is the parent
- Allow Ctrl+R in Edit-Mode too
- Have something like Ctrl/Alt+[Shift+] Cursors to move everything around in Edit mode in normal/[small] steps
- At least for some items (e.g. items which can be dragged freely around outside edit mode) allow same cursor shortcuts to move them around outside editmode too.
- Outside edit-mode, allow moving multiple selected items (e.g. to move multiple items the same amount to the left)
- Maybe have 'Enter Edit Mode' in (context-)menu, including the shortcut in the menu text, so new users do not need to go through the shortcut list to find the shortcut ;)

In addition to that (should be a separate feature request), some sort of (optional) snapping mechanism would be great, maybe something along the lines of
- some predefined positions relative to the parent, defined by the parent, e.g. if the parent is a note, let things be snapped to in front of the note, directly above/below the note (similar to staccato dots), above/below the staff (but always above beams which exceed the staff, similar to how pralls should be placed (but currently aren't, pralls can get behind beams if the beams are outside the staff), above/below meaning above/below the center of the note/the chord. If a place is already taken (eg. by an accidental,articulation), use additional snap positions defined by the accidental/.. instead (like in front of/above an accidental).
This would allow one to position fingerings, organ pedal foot "fingerings", .. to snap in place in a similar way like ornaments, but with more options for the placement (above,below,in front of notes). Things like the accordeon discant symbol could define positions where to snap the discant dots to.

- a grid, relative to the nearest system/staff? to align (over multiple measures) things like text, crescendos,.. below/above a bunch of notes with lots of slurs, articulations, fingerings,.. which get in the way of the normal placement.
This could even be just a special case of the above feature, i.e. let the system define positions based on things like the center line between two staffs/above the top staff for vertical snap positions, and notes/chords, crefs,.. for horizontal snap positions.

I would imagine that even a few snap positions relative to notes/staffs could be very helpful, as one could e.g. snap everything to the nearest horizontal snap line, then select everything and move it up/down the same amount at once to align multiple items at the same height.
Then, of course, it would be great if a thing snapped to a position stays at the snap-position even if it changes, e.g. if a thing is snapped to a position right above a beam, it should stay above the beam if the position of the beam changes..
Wishes .. :)

Yes, yes—please allow us to use the arrow keys to move multiple selected items as well. This would be tremendously useful with things like chord symbols.

That *does* move existing symbols - at least, once the changes take effect. In 1.0, that means saving, closing, and re-opening. In the 2.0, it happens immediately. So it is already quite possible to set positions of symbols globally. What's still missing is a way to do so for smaller groups of selected items.

Wow, this would speed things up so much. For example, I just added 1st and 2nd ending lines over some bars with chord symbols and had to move the chord symbols lower to get everything to fit. Here's what I had to do:

1. Drag away the 1st and 2nd ending lines to get to the chord symbols. (For some reason they block them, even though they don't visibly cover them.)

2. Separately drag each chord symbol down, then (painstakingly) vertically align it with the others.

3. Drag the 1st ending line back into position, then drag the 2nd ending line back and align it with the 1st ending line (quite hard to do with a mouse, I find).

It'd be so much easier this way:

1. Select both ending lines and move them up, retaining their relative alignment.

2. Select all the chord symbols (perhaps by selecting just one of them, then using a single command to select all of that staff's objects of the same type!), then nudge them uniformly lower by pressing down-arrow.

3. Re-select both ending lines and drag them back to their positions.

I just want to select a single note and nudge it left or right using the cursor arrows, possibly with the 'N' key held down.
This is similar to three other notation programs I used in the past, and is strictly for appearance and clarity of the score.

This, with addition of having hideable guides like in photoshop to align the layout design that my elements can snap into if I want to enable that option. I like it when my layouts look well behaved.

e_typo

Hi. These may be important but do not belong in this thread.

I would suggest General Discussion.

Issues are for defined bug problems.

Regards,

And at this point, I think perhaps *everything* can be moved by keyboard. Some just click and nudge, some double click and nudge. Also the Inspector allows keyboard-based (and thus predictable/reproducible) moves.

Any reason not to close this?

Since no one has posted an example where this doesn't work, and it was my issue in the first place, I'm marking this fixed. BTW, a bit of a milestone for me, since this was one of the very first issues I submitted :-)