Hide instruments only when Section is empty?
I'm working on a large orchestra score and was wondering if there was a way to hide empty staves, but only if all the other instruments in the section are empty as well?
In the example outlined by the picture, I'd like to hide the saxophone section (since all the measures are empty), however, I'd like to keep all the brass staves not hidden (including the F Horns). Is there a way to do this?
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Comments
There is currently no straightforward way to do this in MuseScore. I do similar things all the time though. I have a white . in one of my palettes (it's between 2 things I can see so I know the empty cell is my white dot). I apply it to the first measure on a system I don't want to hide so when I select "Hide empty staves" it isn't empty. You can apply it to several measures at once like any other palette item so if you can select the first measure in each of the horns and click the palette item once to apply it to all of them. It's not ideal but it's the best way I know of at the moment.
Perhaps @tantacrul and @oktophonie will see posts like this and consider ways to make this easier in version 4.
In reply to There is currently no… by mike320
I have long advocated we should have a dedicated "not empty" element - something that would appear with an icon like a break or spacer - for this sort of thing. It's not an ideal or full solution either, of course, but it's easily doable within the current architecture. But indeed probably @tantacrul will have ideas for better ways of designing a UI around this.
EDIT: or better yet, have "Hide when empty" settings that say, only hide if this section is empty. That's also pretty easily doable within the current architecture - it's just an extension of the current "Instrument" setting. We'd just need a clear definition of what constitutes a section, but that's the sort of thing already being designed for automatic instrument order & bracketing purposes.