Some palettes display too large or too small in recent nightlies

• Jan 20, 2016 - 13:44
Type
Functional
Severity
S4 - Minor
Status
closed
Project
MuseScore

MuseScore 2.0.3 or Master nightly, Mac OS X El Capitan, 2010 MacBook Pro (non-Retina display)

Following https://musescore.org/en/node/87861, there was some confusion about things displaying at different sizes on different platforms. Thus, it's possible this only affects my specific platform. But the fact remains that some of the palettes are now displaying their contents too large, and others, too small.

Still others display the content the same size but add a lot of white space around it—in fact, everything seems to take up more space for this reason even if it is displayed smaller.

On the left are palettes in 2.0.2. On the right are the same palettes in a recent nightly.

Notice:
1. The grace notes are extremely large (much larger than the actual display of notes in the score).
2. The brackets are the same size, but the palette cells are larger with more white space.
3. The articulations and ornaments are smaller (though still with more whitespace).

2palettes.png 3palettes.png

Any thoughts?

Comments

• Jan 20, 2016 - 15:32

As far as I know, this is correct. The sizes that palettes displayed in previous releases was wrong - or at least, was wrong on any system that was not exactly 96 DPI. So with the changes, the palette sizes should now be correct, which is to say, different than they looked on any system that was previously displaying them incorrectly.

The definition of "correct" in this instance is quite simple, so you can measure it yourself and if you find an example that is not "correct" by this measure, then post the specific details. But I tested this and everything seemed "correct" in my tests. Here is what "correct" means:

For any palette item that is simply drawn like a regular score element (and that's almost everything), the correct size of the palette is the size that same element would be in a score with default (1.764mm) spatium, like My First Score, *as modified by the scaling percentage given in the Palette Properties* (you may need to be in a custom palette to display that dialog). So for instance, the Clefs palette is defined to draw at only 80% of actual size, but Note Heads are defined to draw at 130%. Although this assumes they actually fit in the alloted cell size.

For palettes that are drawn using special icons (the grace notes, beam properties, frames, a few others), the icons (which are SVG files located in https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/tree/master/mscore/data/icons) are scaled to fit the actual size of the palette cells given in "logical" pixels - the size a pixel would be at 96 DPI, so they should be consistent across systems. That is, specifying a palette cell size of 48 should yeild 1/2" on any system, and the icon will be sized to fit.

As a completely subjective discussion more appropriate for the forum, we could discuss whether the scaling percentages and palette cell sizes could bear tweaking. But do bear in mind, what you personally were accustomed to seeing in 2.0.2 was not what anyone else was seeing unless they had the same display resolution as you. So do not be too swayed by what you personally were accustomed to.

Again, if you find a specific palette element that is truly not correct, then do post the details here and change the status back to active. But I just tested a bunch a verified they are correct on my system.

Reply

• Jan 20, 2016 - 21:34
Title Some palettes display too large or too small after FreeType and DPI changes ⇒ Some palettes display too large or too small in recent nightlies

Thank you very much. Armed with your information, I've been able to identify that some of what I'm seeing now appears to be the result of actual changes to the palettes' properties. In other words, the "scaling percentages and palette cell sizes [that] could bear tweaking" seem to have borne some tweaking already.

I created new custom workspaces out of the Advanced workspaces of 2.0.2 and a nightly, respectively, so that I could access the Palette Properties information. I found that:

* In 2.0.2, the Articulations & Ornaments palette is set to scale of 1.00, but in the nightly it's 0.84. That's why it looks smaller now—nothing to do with FreeType/DPI changes. Myself, I don't like them this small.

* Conversely, the Key Signatures palette is set to 0.84 in 2.0.2, but in the nightly is 1.00. I hate to say it, but I don't like them this large.

Then there are others, like the Lines palette, which are exactly the same before and after (0.80). And there are the uncomfortably huge grace note icons, but that's a matter for a separate discussion.

Can you confirm that there have been deliberate changes here?

Reply

• Jan 23, 2016 - 06:24
Status (old) needs info ⇒ active

Hmm, there *does* seem to be some sort of inconsistency here. I think I understand what is going on, and you chose good examples to help me see this.

Somehow, the way the scaling is reported for the key signatures palette seems different from the articulations palette. The key signatures palette reports as 1.00 on my system as well, and indeed shows exactly that size, which strikes me as just fine. But the articulations palette shows as 0.58 on my system, which happens to be the result of taking 1.00 and scaling it according to my screen resolution. My display is 166 DPI, nominal is 96 DPI, so my display scaling factor is 1.73, and 1 / 1.73 = 0.58. I'm guessing the value you are seeing - 0.84 - is what results from taking 1.00 and scaling it according to *your* screen resolution.

Which is to say, I think key signatures are behaving correctly - scaling to 1.00 on both of our systems - but articulations is not. Everyone is going to see a different articulations palette, I think, and the higher your screen resolution, the smaller - exactly what these changes were trying to correct.

I think I see why this is messed up - in the code, when the articulations palette is set up, its magnification is never set explicitly, whereas it is for the key signatures palette. It is the palettes whose magnifications are not set explicitly that are going to be different sizes on different displays, depending on your resolution.

Looking at the other palettes, I think the accidentals palette has the same issue, so does tremolo and a handful of others. Basically, anything you see as being 0.84 on your system but I see as 0.58 on mine.

I think the solution will be to explicitly initialize the magnification of newly created palettes to 1.00 in the Palette constructor, so we don't necessarily have to do so explicitly in each palette. Actually, the problem is that is *is* set to 1.0, but should be set to 1.0 * guiScaling.

Thanks for pointing this out! Even though some changes were correct and to be expected, certain ones are indeed not right.

Reply

• Jan 23, 2016 - 06:57
Status (old) active ⇒ patch (ready to commit)

https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/2355

This one-line change does indeed fix the problem. It's still the case that 2.0.2 sizes were incorrect on high DPI displays, so you *will* still see some changes from 2.0.2 to 2.0.3 if your system is higher than 96 DPI, but the new sizes will now be "correct" and the scale figures shown in the palette properties will eb the same as everyone else's. They will generally be larger than you are used to if you have a high DPI display, but more like what everyone else is used to.

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