WYSIWYG chords in MuseScore 2.0 and how to tweak it, to be more like 1.3

First, the *easy* answer to your questions is: if you want the behavior to be more like 1.3, then continue to use the 1.3 chord definition files. Set the chord style to "Custom" and for best results in terms of compatibility with 1.3, check the "Use chords.xml" option. You will find all chords will continue to render as they did, since the same rendering instructions are used, and you get the "coercing" behavior for free. That is, chords are not unrecognized any more; they are simply converted to whatever your selected chord definition file expects. It's a win/win.

I don't recommend "jazzchords.xml". It was already deprecated as far as I am concerned by the time 1.1 came out. But the "cchords" files should be fine, As for making the default rendering in the "Jazz" style "more like 1.3", remember, there was no one single 1.3 look. It differed depending on which chord definition file you used. I tried to pick defaults for 2.0 that I thought represented best practices in the world of published jazz scores. It is very similar to cchords_muse.xml, which was designed with similar goals, but I made a number of improvements based on further experience and based on the more sophisticated capabilities of the 2.0 chord symbol engine.

Now, if you don't want to simply use one of the 1.3 XML files but instead want to customize behavior above and beyond the 2.0 "Jazz" defaults, we are getting into very esoteric territory, but it *is* possible. You just need to hand-edit the XML file, as you have already seen. This is not documented because I don't expect it will be worth the trouble to do so - very few people will want to bother, and those few who do will probably have difficult-to-anticipate special requirements that wouldn't be covered in any generic documentation I put together.

To answer your specific questions:

1) Way too broad. What *specifically* would you like to do? Or more to the point: what specifically would you like to do that I haven't answered elsewhere here?

2) Enter "o" as a chord in your XML file, just like you did for "mi". Do the same for "o7", "mi9", etc. Each chord you want coerced gets a chord tag with the name you want to win.

3) Enter "mi7b5" as a name tag in the same manner will force all variations on that syntax to render as mi7b5 - eg, m7b5, min7(b5), etc. But it won't force "07" to render that way. To do this, simply add another name tag (maybe two - one for "0", one for "07") to the same chord definition. Note the documentation that *is* present in the comments specifically describes this exact use case (for mi7b5 and 07). So please do study the existing file.

4) Best way to see what's available in MuseJazz is to grab the sources and look at the font in FontForge. But you can also see it pretty well just from the list of "sym" declarations in chords_jazz.xml.

Regarding "alt" - this is still a recognized chord; I just changed how it is rendered by default based on an analysis of published scores. But if you use one of the old XML files that superscripted it, you should still get the superscripting. See again my first comment - if you want the 1.3 behavior, use onew of the 1.3 XML files, which are still provided with the distrubtion for compatibility.

To get "alt" to superscript in chords_jazz.xml, see the "token" definition for that string. Change the render tag to add whatever vertical offset you like. "m:0:-5 alt m:0:5" will cause it to be render 5 points above the baseline (and then return the cursor back the original height), which is how it was in 1.3 for cchords_muse.xml (as you can see if you edit that file and look for the definition of that string).

For mi(ma7), again WYWIWYG. You want lower case and parens? Then *type* lower case and parens. It is true that the "ma7" is now superscripted, whereas in at least some of the older XML files it might not have been (in some it was, in others it was not). Again, I picked a set of defaults I thought would work well, and I wanted it to work well regardless of whether you typed parens or not, so superscripting seemed the best way.

If you prefer to disable the superscripting of this but for watever reason do not choose to simply use the old cchords_muse.xml, you'll have to edit the chords_jazz.xml by hand. Depending on exactly what you want - how many different chords you want this to affect - you might want to edit the ENTITY definition for "mod" and "modn", and or the "token" definition for "ma" in class "modifier", or you might just want to enter a specific "chord" definition for this chord complete with render tags (you could steal the one from cchords_muse.xml).

Yes, this is not documented. Fully documenting all the possibilities would take a long time, and hardly anyone would take advantage of it. Perhaps after the release of 2.0 when there is more time for such things, I might write something up.