No automatic beaming (for vocal scores)

clear statement for professional. I mean professional singers, who are able to "read the music", which is the case nowadays, at least in classical music.

But, there is a lot of people, especially in choirs who don't "read the music". They read the lyrics, and rely on the choir director, and on the few among them who read the music.

In this case, when I prepare a score, I stick to lyrics, including cutting measures at the end of a system in order to keep unaffected a whole lyrics line. Melismas are given by a long underscore on the lyrics line, Upbeat are clearly shown in the score, and so on......

Maybe I'm not always coherent, because some scores are more "for non-educated people" and others for "educated ones"....and the other sings just by imitation....

So any possibility to freely choose editorial ways will find supporters

Despite the non-beaming still being done by some, the MPA (music publisher's association) specifically states that it is now THE accepted standard to beam vocal parts the same as instrumental parts, period.

I do agree that flexibility is the goal for the software.

Select the entire staff and double click the single note icon in the beam palette

The *option* to remove beams or choose that default is perfectly sensible simply because users should be able to do what they want. That said, yes, *older* scores used to do the *inferior* approach of beaming only for slurs. Anyone *can* learn to be comfortable with the inferior approach, but modern scores recognizing that beaming that fits the meter is superior in that it does in fact make the music clearer. The contemporary standard for vocal music is indeed to have the beams the same as for instrumental music and use slur lines to indicate slurs. I was not saying anything about this particular issue being a matter of

"Anyone who can count doesn't need a beam to show him where the beats are" is a misguided comment. Need is not the same as whether something is better or worse. Hundreds of years ago, multi-part scores didn't space things out so that they vertically lined up. You had to do all the counting to compare the parts and figure out what lined up. You might as well say "anyone who can count doesn't need barlines to show him where the measures are." The fact that multiple approaches can be usable doesn't mean they are all equally good.

This is a case where older music used a certain tradition. Now, the standard has changed. The change itself can be a little harder for people used to the old way to get used to, but it's an improvement, though subtle.

There are different types of vocal scores. In hymns and certain other choral styles, not beaming is common, but in many other styles of music (pop songbooks, etc) the beams are common and expected.

Beams help with reading rhythms quite a bit if the music is rhythmically complex. Consider a measure with a mixture of sixteenths and eighths. These will be beamed to make each beat clear, so it is obvious at a glance which note falls on which beat. That information is not immediately apparent when beams are absent, meaning if somethng goes wrong early in a measure, you are likely to be off for the rest of the measure rather than being able to correct the error on the next beat. And if you are accustomed to seeing beams, you won't make as many errors in the first place, because there are only eight possible ways to put sixteenths and eighths on a beam - so only eight patterns to learn. Whereas without beams, there is no easy way to reduce things down to those eight basic patterns, meaning you cannot use pattern recognition to help you get the rhythm right. It becomes a more laborious process of counting each sixteenth note rather than immediately recognizing the rhythm. So it really does end up leading to measurably more rhythmic reading errors. Of course, after spending enough time with the music, one will be able to learn the rhythm either way, but the beaming really is very helpful in sight-reading.

Anyhow, as has been explained, if you prefer not to have beams, simply select all and double click the "no beam" icon, or do so in the Time Signature Properties.

Indeed, the older convention is still followed when engraving older music specifically, or occasionally modern music in older styles. But if you say you've never seen a piece of vocal music from the higher end publishers that doesn't use syllabic beaming, I'm guessing you are mostly familiar with older music, because the modern style really is more common in modern music. As a random example, here is an excerpt from a modern score from a major composer (Eric Whitacre) and major publisher (Boosey & Hawkes) showing the modern style:

Anyhow, the traditional vocal beaming plugin does work very well in my experience, does the job quite simply and accurately.

I think so. But I have never added anything to the UI and don't really know how to do that. Is there some hint you can point me to, how to do that? (Specifically how to edit .ui?)

I implemented the actual behaviour in 518ebb42

I think I'd rather not gray out the time signature beaming properties, because the user would still be able to change the grouping.

One more thought:
I'm not so sure this should go into the time signature properties, because one would have to take care of this for every time signature change.
What about putting it in the staff properties. Since it would probably be used throughout the whole score.