automatically change to double barline at section breaks
As the icon implies, a section break should probably also end in a double barline, so it would be nice if adding a section break also added a double bar.
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Comments
No, often enough, if not even more often it should even be am end barline
MiseScore should not make that decision, but leave it to the user
In reply to No, often enough, if not… by Jojo-Schmitz
final barline would be ok too. I'm not suggesting removing the ability to change a barline to whatever you need; just suggesting that it start out as a double bar. I'd rather have it be something that's correct some of the time (double bar, final bar) than something that's never correct (regular single bar).
In reply to final barline would be ok… by mlavengood
Double bar is wrong about as often as a final bar would be. Not changing it automatically is wrong too, but there's nothing to win in any case.
Changing key signature at a certian time added a double barline. This got disabled in a later version again, for the same reason.
In reply to final barline would be ok… by mlavengood
Regular single bar is often a lot of the time, actually. Section breaks aren't just for movements, but also things like, separating excerpts in educational worksheets and other applications.
That said, I could certainly see the choice being a checkbox in the Inspector along with the other properties, or a style setting to set the default.
In reply to Regular single bar is often… by Marc Sabatella
Educational worksheets are my primary use for MuseScore and that's precisely where you would probably want a double bar at the end of an excerpt—it indicates that the example is over. This is precisely the use case that inspired my suggestion. Checkbox could work.
In reply to I get your point but… by mlavengood
Again, sometimes you want that, often you don't. I use double bars for excerpts that represent standalone pieces of music, but not for things like a single measure showing a single chord voicing. That just gets cluttered.
Checkboxes could work indeed, but - is it really simpler to click a checkbox in the Inspector than to click the double barline in the palette?
In reply to Again, sometimes you want… by Marc Sabatella
Who is using section breaks after single-measure voicing examples? Section breaks include a line break so that would just give you a super-wide measure. I don't think that's a concern here.
Not in inspector, no, but I liked the idea of a styles preference.
In reply to Who is using section breaks… by mlavengood
Imagine using horizontal frames as well and placing the section break on these ;-)
In reply to Who is using section breaks… by mlavengood
My norm is to use horizontal frames between individual examples on a single system, with invisible breaths to give playback pause, and then use section breaks between systems.
In reply to My norm is to use horizontal… by Marc Sabatella
Honestly sounds like an edge case that most people would use system breaks for. The articulated purpose of the section break is usually to end a section which suggests a double bar (or final bar) is most often appropriate. I’m surprised that’s up for debate lol. And again nothing would be stopping anyone from changing it back to single if that’s really what they want. But imo the default should be what’s notationally conventional. As is, the purpose of the section break vs the line break is obscured.
In reply to Honestly sounds like an edge… by mlavengood
Could be an "edge case" for yourl but it's what I spend most of my life doing. So all I can do is speak from my own experience. A given worksheet usually has a dozen section breaks in a score of just a couple pages, and maybe at most one or two might want double bars - almost inevitable, the plain thin kind. People using them for movements would want the "final" double bars, but they'd only have about two or three in a score of perhaps 50 pages. I'm not really seeing the empirical evidence that any one type of barline is so much more common that it should become the default. But if you can think of a way of collecting that data objectively, then a change could certainly be considered. As it is, the fact that it is trivially simple - a single click - to add the barline you want makes this seems a pretty low priority issue no matter how it turns out.
In reply to Could be an "edge case" for… by Marc Sabatella
I never suggested I have empirical evidence, and it's a bit silly to ask that of people suggesting changes to a music notation program. My appeal is to logic. The function of the section break is to delineate sections of music. When a section of music is over, the notational convention is to use a double or final bar. (By the way, the term is "double bar" for what you are calling the "plain thin kind." The thick line is a "final barline.") My argument is that a music notation program should default to conventional music notation (and of course allow the user to change to non-standard notation if they want non-standard notation like you do).
I'm sure it is low-priority but it would also be simple to program and as far as I know it's ok to suggest low-priority small improvements on this forum, right?
In reply to I never suggested I have… by mlavengood
So what should it be then, double or final barline? What if the section ens with an 3nd repeat barline, overwrite? Sure not, so that'd be a special case to cater for. What to do if there is any other barline already? Again, overwrite is probably not a good thing, so yet another special casing.
No matter what we choose, we're wrong in about 50%, so leave it to the user to decide.
In reply to So what should it be then,… by Jojo-Schmitz
We've been through this already. Right now with single barline it's wrong >50% of the time (except for Marc).
In reply to We've been through this… by mlavengood
Not just for me - that's my point It's true for virtually every single educator in the world, who produces worksheets or other scores with dozens of section breaks.
And that even if that's a minority of users, it still might be a majority of 8actual section breaks", because as I mentioned, a typical sonata or symphony might be dozens of pages and only two or three sections breaks, while a typical educational worksheet might be two pages and contain over a dozen of them, and there might be 100 such worksheets produced for every symphony when one considers not just me but the the world at large.
I want to make clear I am not in any position to make any decision on this or control what does or does not happen. I am simply trying to help make sure MuseScore does what truly makes sense. And sometimes that does mean digging a little deeper to try to understand these things.
In reply to I never suggested I have… by mlavengood
Sure, it's fine to suggest low priority things. But it's not silly at all to try to understand better whether it would in fact be seen as an improvement for most people, or a step backwards - something automatic MuseScore does that they don't want done and then have to take extra steps to override. And that's why I'm suggesting it could be useful to ascertain what percentage of section breaks actually should be accompanied by each barline style, so we don't automatically do something most people don't want done. Obviously, there are legitimate cases when each of the three barlines styles would be "correct", as I have explained - section breaks are used for far more things than just movements of a piece as you are focusing on. I'm just wondering how we'd go about calculating which of these use cases is actually the most common, because it generally is good to have the default represent the most common use case.
In reply to Sure, it's fine to suggest… by Marc Sabatella
I am not focusing on movements of a piece. I'm almost always making worksheets and have literally never written a multi-movement piece in MuseScore. I'll remind you again that I am also an educator who produces worksheets and other scores with dozens of section breaks. You can see my work on viva.pressbooks.pub/openmusictheory.
This "empirical" approach you're insisting on is impractical to say the least. Even if you, say, crawled the uploaded scores here and then analyzed the code to find how often section breaks coincide with double, single, or final barlines, the data is already skewed, because many people are going to just leave it as the default option without thinking whether or not they ought to change it.
Instead of trying to determine empirical support for MuseScore features, it's easier and just as relevant to consider what is notationally conventional.
In reply to I am not focusing on… by mlavengood
If there were one single clear-cut rule... but there isn't!
In reply to I am not focusing on… by mlavengood
Nice, I didn't realize you were involved with that - really excellent work, I refer to it often with my own students as well.
So, this actually gives us a pretty starting place for a discussion on empirical data. To me, what I see here is an excellent argument for why not to automatically add any sort of double barlines. Looking at the current version of the "digital PDF" for example, beginning on page 17 where the first musical examples appear, I count 10 examples before the first with an actual final barline occurs on page 21 - and that one, I'd suggest, perhaps should not have been a final barline at all, since it is not meant to convey a complete piece of music.
Looking at the next pages after that, starting on page 25, I see a mix of no barlines, single barlines, ordinary double barlines, and final barlines being used for what are essentially the same exact type of thing - simple examples of a theoretical concept that are not meant to indicate actual pieces of music or indeed even to be played as such at all. It would be great for those to done consistently, but to me, final barlines would be the least appropriate choice for these sorts of examples. Maybe double barlines, maybe single, maybe none. But it's definitely worth further discussion now that we have specifics to refer to!
Skipping ahead to the Tonicization chapter, there are a number of examples with a little more context - two-sections of music definitely meant to be played and hear. For these, I see you are often using the plain double barline (eg p 436), not final barline. That would be my default go-to choice as well for this type of context, but of course, it doesn't match the "convention" for ordinary nonpedagogical use, which would indeed be a final barline as in the end of movements. Other places in this same general area, however, it's just the single barline - eg, p. 442). Was this a conscious choice - was there "style guide" to follow here? I could imagine the rule being, "if only a single example is present on a line, end with a double bar, but if there are multiple examples on a single line separated by white space, end each with a single bar".
Skipping ahead further still to the chapter on common-tone chords, I see another common use case here - excerpts from actual scores (Joplin, Chopin). Here, the ordinary single bar is clearly the most appropriate choice. Unless it just so happens that the excerpt itself ended on a place where the original edition specified double bars, but that's not the case with either of these examples.
Anyhow, I hope you appreciate I am not trying to be arbitrary here, and that again, I have no actual say in any of this. I'm just trying in engage in a meaningful discussion regarding what is actually likely to be the most helpful in the most cases.
BTW, one thing this suggests to me is that an interesting way this could be implemented in a meaningful way would be to have the barline type be a property of the break itself. Kind of like how you can set the playback pause, or whether to restart measure numbering, etc. Then you could simply add multiple types of break to a custom palette and choose the one that fits the situation best.
In reply to Nice, I didn't realize you… by Marc Sabatella
The last point is pretty much what I am asking for, yes.