S button beside "placement" property of fingering resets the property

• Apr 28, 2019 - 01:17
Reported version
3.0
Priority
P2 - Medium
Type
Ergonomical (UX)
Frequency
Many
Severity
S4 - Minor
Reproducibility
Always
Status
closed
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
MuseScore

The "Set as style" button on String Number Placement rests to the default style instead. In Format > Style... > Text Styles > String Number there is no option to set the Placement.

The workaround is to select a String Number in the score, bring up its menu, Select > All Similar Elements, then set the Placement.

1) Select a note, open the fingering palette, double click circled 5; the string number is displayed above the staff by default.

2) In the Inspector, scroll down to Fingering, confirm style is String Number.

3) Change Placement setting to Below; the S button becomes active.

4) Click the S button, the Placement reverts to Above.

5) Confirm style was not set by adding string number to another note.

Attachment Size
String_Number_Placement.mscz 5.97 KB

Comments

• Apr 28, 2019 - 07:17
Priority ⇒ P2 - Medium

This is true for all fingerings, actually - the placement algorithm is not actually based on style, but staff (for two-staff instruments like piano, place is above top staff, below bottom. Probably we need to disable that button.

Reply

• Apr 28, 2019 - 16:05

I pray that "disable that button" doesn't mean "remove the ability to easily put string numbers below the G-clef staff." Guitar music is often written with the string numbers below the staff and finger numbers above. Sometimes the string numbers are below the staff for one voice and above the staff for the other.

Reply

• Apr 28, 2019 - 16:09

PS, I believe you are referring to the grand staff when you mention top staff and bottom staff. For guitar music the fingering notation on the top G-clef should not be affected by the presence or absence of the bottom Tablature staff.

Reply

• Apr 28, 2019 - 17:18

Thank you. The X command works great on individual string numbers. Also on a group of individually selected string numbers.

But I have not found a way to select all string numbers without also selecting fingerings, so I can't figure out how to move all the string numbers with X command while leaving all the fingerings in place.

So if Placement of string numbers could be style setting, or a per-voice setting, or something like, that would be quite useful.

Reply

• Apr 28, 2019 - 18:03

To select just string numbers, Select / More / Same subtype.

It's certainly conceivable that someday we could add a style setting for string number placement. It's more likely if you can show that placing string numbers consistently below the staff is actually a commonly used style in published music. Everything I have seen suggests this isn't so, but I don't have that much experience here.

Reply

• Apr 28, 2019 - 18:13

"Sometimes the string numbers are below the staff for one voice and above the staff for the other."

And if there were three voices (very common in guitar repertoire, perhaps/probably even the most common) or four voices, how would we do it? Currently, Above/Below is working correctly as described above. However, the possibility of placing string numbers onto the staff is currently missing the most. And it is also a very frequent occurrence, regardless of the voices number.
Currently, a workaround is to add a frame/circle to a LH fingering, to edit and place them in a palette for reuse. But as it is not intended for this, the frame collides with the note, and so it is necessary to edit the position (feasible of course). Otherwise, you have to disable the automatic placement, but that's another story, still ongoing.

Reply

• Nov 10, 2019 - 18:22

The complication here is that as a score style, the default value should actually be "auto" - we place fingering and string numbers above sometimes, below other times, depending on the text style, the presence of multiple voices, and the presence of other staves. However, we don't currently support "auto" as a value for placement, and trying to implement this would likely come with compatibility issues. So probably for now disabling the button is best, if that can be done without fundamentally breaking the property (eg, don't change the implementation, just the UI).

Reply

• Nov 11, 2019 - 05:13

Remove is probably better. But either would be OK. The complication is that this button is automatically generated and I'm not sure how easy it to defeat that.

Reply

• Nov 11, 2019 - 06:06

And I found out that the class InspectorFingering directly inherits InspectorStaffText with no modification, so what we're seeing is actually a variety of staff text inspector. The S button is inherited as well. And I suppose we can delete inspector_fingering.ui. It isn't used anywhere.

But, later if we want to develop a fully functional fingering placement system (with "Auto, Above, Below" and "Auto" as default), a standalone fingering inspector UI is neccesary, as staff text inspector UI doesn't have an "Auto" choice.

Reply

• Nov 14, 2019 - 07:31
Title Fingering: Style "Placement" cannot be changed from system default ⇒ S button beside "placement" property of fingering reset the property

Reply

• Nov 14, 2019 - 10:06
Title S button beside "placement" property of fingering reset the property ⇒ S button beside "placement" property of fingering resets the property

Reply

Fix version
3.5.0