List of issues In creating ready-for-publication lead sheets

As I related recently, I just finished doing a large set of lead sheets in MuseScore, and I find that MuseScore meets my own needs in terms of the control I have over the appearance of the chart. But I have also done work over the years producing and editing lead sheets for publication in a major fakebook series, and in that capacity I need to conform to their standards. It occurs to me there are only a handful of issues that are holding back MuseScore for that purpose.

Of course, each publisher has its own standards, and different types of scores present different sets of issues, so I wouldn't take this to be a definitive or exhaustive list of what would be needed for all publishing applications. I'm also not claiming these issues are any more important than any others. But it's a good list for this particular application.

Note some of these are bugs, some are feature requests. Also, some are addressed either fully or partially in 2.0 already, but I list them in case there is a chance to getting any of it into 1.2.

1. Lyric extenders (underscores) don't work across system breaks - see http://musescore.org/en/node/3961

2. "hide empty staves" issues with both barlines and with brackets - see http://musescore.org/en/node/6107

3. "hide empty staves" issue with spacers - see http://musescore.org/en/node/12089

4. "hide empty staves" issue with winged repeats - see http://musescore.org/en/node/9746

5. Need ability to set left barline style at beginning of system. Right now, it's basically always a single bar when not a "start repeat", but in cases where the previous system ends in a double bar, some publishers require the next system to start with a double bar. So, either an option to make the left barline at start of system always be the same as the one at the end of the previous system, or the ability to set left barline style of measure independently of right barline style. See http://musescore.org/en/node/9872 (I don't think there is an actual issue filed for this yet).

I'm impressed this list is as short and nit-picky as it is. I mean, speaking as someone who has done hundreds of lead sheets over the years, I am pretty sure those are the only things that would get in the way of using MuseScore to produce lead sheets suitable for publication the Real Book.

Of course, there are always usability improvement that could help make the process go more quickly. The things I find myself having to correct over and over by hand include the positions of rests in a multi-voice context, direction and placement of ties in chords, and the handling of collisions between seconds and between accidentals in a multi-voice context. Also the bug where accidentals are displayed incorrectly after a tie is one I am constantly having to look out for and work around by hand. I know most of these are already being addressed for 2.0.