Quicker way to change text styles?
(re MS v3.6)
To change a score's text styles (font, point size, etc.) you must click Format > Style > Text Styles, then find and select the style in the list. That's four steps. For. Each. Style. You. Want. To. Change.
As a quicker alternative, how about adding an “Edit text style” command to the context menu of a selected text item, which, when clicked, would automatically open the Style window with that style selected?
I know you can use the Inspector (F8) to change individual text objects, BTW.
Thanks for considering it!
Comments
Use the Inspector to change it on an inividual text and then the "S" button to "Set as style" for the givet text type.
The Inspector was meant to get us away from having to use the context menu
For MuseScore 4 there's a way to reset them all in one go (but not to set all to a non-default one), see https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/9602
And mentioned, the Inspector is usually the way to go for this and for most style settings actually - that "Set as style" button is the key. But also note, if you have a favorite set of text styles you like to use a lot, no need to do this over and over. Just do it once, then save the resulting style (Format / Save Style) and load it into other scores, and/or save the score itself to your templates folder and select it from the template list when creating a new score.
Another simple trick to save that bit of time it takes to set up one score is to go ahead and use Format / Save Style to save the current style before making changes, then open the resulting MSS file in a text editor and do a global search & replace.
In reply to And mentioned, the Inspector… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks for your replies, guys. (And yes, Marc, I understand the idea of creating and using templates, rather than hand-configuring each new score [LOL]... But saving a style as a text file and opening it in a text editor? Sorry, a bit too Linux-y for me! 😄 )
Using the Inspector for this is actually pretty practical, once you know it's possible. (Had you not explained what the tiny "S" buttons were, I never would've have had a clue.) It's just unintuitive, as the Inspector is presented as a tool to "inspect" and change the properties of individual objects, not to make score-wide changes.
When I worked as a tech writer, I learned that one of the hardest things about software design is imagining what it's like not to already understand how it works.
If you'd like new MS users to be able to change text styles more intuitively—without having to learn the kinds of esoteric operations you describe here—adding a simple "Edit Text Style" command to the selected text's context menu would be consistent with the better-written publishing apps I've seen. The rest of you could ignore it and keep doing it the way you're used to doing it—and everyone's a winner!
Cheers!
In reply to Thanks for your replies,… by Andy Fielding
Indeed, we have Style... in the right-click menu for many elements, but not text. Would be a logical addition.