Problems with selecting items on score.

• Sep 1, 2023 - 20:35

Mac OS Ventura:
I keep having difficulties with selecting items in MS4 that I don't remember from MS1 - 3.

  1. I find it difficult to select invisible items (in the mode where they are visible and grey). The selection either fails to "catch" or ends up selecting the whole measure.
    It helps to enlarge the score (command +) but usually only for one item. If there are several items to select in sequence I end up toggling command + / command - / command 0 between selecting elements.

  2. Selecting a visible item (espcially a small one like a rest or a note head) I still may end up involuntarily selecting a whole measure, less often than with invisible items but often enough to be called "annoying".

Are there any tricks I need to learn? Chapters in the handbook to read? I am grateful for advice.


Comments

To add to this post:
3. I can not select a tuplet. I tried every way I can think of, click the beam, click a notehead, click the number or the bracket, select all notes in the tuplet followed by control click. I always end up with beams, notepads or nothing selected. I want to add numbers/brackets to the first few triplets in the piece and keep the rest unnumbered. It is terribly slow to make all the unnecessary numbers and brackets invisible.

In reply to by azumbrunn

I am not a Mac user and the problems mentioned above are beyond my scope. Though I will mention that tuplets can be made by selecting a note (usually a quarter note), press and hold "Ctrl" (Mac may have a different key) and press a number key (eg. 3 for triplets). Hope this helps.

You can set a value for "Proximity for selecting elements" in "Preferences / Canvas" which has the value 4px in my 3.6.2 installation. Have you changed this value?
Or can the selection filter help you?

In reply to by azumbrunn

If your touchpad is what controls the on-screen cursor, you may have a setting in your OS to lower the cursor speed. This way movements on the touchpad can be more precise, as the on-screen cursor will travel a smaller distance for the same movement on the touchpad.

I should stress that all these operations worked fairly well ,(not always perfectly but perfectly acceptably) on Musescore 1 - 3 with the same computer or its MacBook predecessor.

Nothing in particular has changed regarding selection with respect to the things you mention, except the default setting for proximity allowance in Edit / Preferences / Canvas. There were many complaints in MU3 that it was too hard to click an empty area to select a measure when zoomed out and people would accidentally select notes instead, so the default was turned down a bit. Feel free to turn it back up if you find yourself often missing the notehead and selecting the measure by mistake.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks for this info. Interestingly enough I never had a problem selecting measures in MS3, on the second try I was almost always successful, which is good enough. Now however I click consciously into the middle of the item and it does not catch at all (>50% of attempts) or selects sometimes the whole measure. This may be a matter of degree rather than something new. Anyhow I'll change parameter.

What is genuinely new though is my extra difficulty with invisible elements.

I have a very complex score right now. There are often voices in both hands simultaneously in the piano part. I don't play the instrument but to me it looks like you need 20 fingers to play this music (some of it is on youtube, i.e. somebody managed to play it). So the measures are full of selectable items and maybe that is part of my difficulty.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

It's not MU3 scores I have difficulties with but MU4 scores. In the attached example look at measure 40 to 50 and try to select a (invisible) number or bracket on one of the triplets. Try to select a second number/bracket. This never works for me. In order to select a set of several invisible elements I (need to either - move the score around a bit or make it larger or smaller (command +, command - or command 0) in between each "pick".

I am curious if this reproduces.

Attachment Size
Cello_sonata_c-minor_1.mscz 83.77 KB

In reply to by azumbrunn

The reason I asked you to post an MU3 score is so we can compare apples to apples - how selection of a given element differs between versions. Again, I'm not aware of any changes here. And I don't have any trouble at all selecting the invisible triplets numbers or brackets in measure 40 at the default 100% zoom. What value do you have selected for your proximity setting? Mine is at the (new) default 2px. Also, are you perhaps using a large mouse pointer size that makes it more difficult than need be to be precise about where it actually is? Of course, that would affect all selection in all programs, but it could be a reason you might benefit from a large proximity setting.

I guess a screen recording where you compare the same selection in MU3 vs MU4 could be useful; maybe someone will be able to spot something else about your system that could explain something.

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