Editing Score Automatically Resets every time a note is added or changed

To me it isn't a case of should / shouldn't, but it has been observed that when dealing with music of more than a single voice/staff, sometimes when you finish entering music for one measure in you might prefer to move to the next voice/staff rather than the next measure. So in these cases, you might not actually want the cursor to advance to the next measure. Of course that is exactly what it is does and normally everyone is OK with it, but in the cases where the next measure starts a new line/page, people *have* expressed frustration with this. Not that I would advocate any change to the default cursor behavior on this account though. Nor do I like the idea of the view not following the cursor.

Uploading a score to show an example of this is impossible. I don't necessarily have the same screen resolution that you do. I probably don't have the same zoom set on my score that you do either. Therefore, MS must realize that we have different displays. These 2 issues will make it impossible to tell exact steps to reproduce wild jumps during score entry. I don't have a video recorder set up to my monitor, so I can't upload a video of it. I don't have enough data to upload a video anyway. The problem happens in continuous view - constantly, such ridiculous jumps do not happen in a decently programmed word processor.

In a word processor, when you reach the last word on the line, if the word stays on the previous line the cursor stays there blinking at the end of the line. It will only move to the next line when you press the space bar. If the word moves to the next line, the cursor and word BOTH move to the next line and the screen is appropriately redrawn.

Having said that, the word processor analogy is not entirely the same. Word processing documents are laid out in lines, you reach the end of the line, then the auto line feed to the next line makes sense as described above. That linear action makes the writing of a word processor much easier. Music notation is not normally done a single measure at a time, but rather at least a few (2, 20 , however many you like) measures from one instrument then back to about the same spot and a few measures from another instrument.

If you want to experience this then here's my suggestion. Find a score from IMSLP that has at least 10 instruments (this will likely give you various measure lengths) on it and enter the score using the computer keyboard only, one music page at a time. This makes it very convenient to have the PDF open to full screen and MuseScore filling up half the screen on top of it so you can see the current line in both programs (on my windows system, moving the mouse over the PDF and spinning the wheel scrolls the PDF). Some scores allow me to keep MS in the same spot. Scores with 2 pages of music (side by side) on one PDF page require me to move MS to the bottom of the screen to see the first few instruments and up to the top to see the last few. So pick a score with one page of music per PDF page. Enter the score in continuous view. It doesn't matter if the notes play when you enter them. While entering the score you will need to scroll up, down, left and right to see the next measure in MS you want to enter. Such as: you did a page of Bassoon and now you are doing the horns, you will probably need to scroll down and left so you can click the next spot to put a note. This is totally expected. One thing about entering into MS, set the zoom so 2 or 3 filled in lines of music with several 16th notes takes up less than 1/2 of the screen. You should always be able to see 2 full measures plus some if you scroll the current measure to the left of the screen. This is a comfortable zoom for me to be able to see space between staffs so I can usually enter and move staff text and dynamics as needed. While entering the score, the staff and system text should have no effect on this, so you can probably ignore it if you like. I'm not sure if dynamics affect this, but (de)crescendo lines might. While in continuous view I do not used spacers except temporarily to be able to grab a dynamic with a note on top of it. I will delete it as soon as the score is readable again. I'm trying to tell you anything that I do that might cause the wild jumps.

In my opinion the last note entered should never leave the screen (unless I scroll), just like the description of the word processor above. If it is the last note of the measure it should stay on the screen along with the cursor. This allows the user to see the last note he entered. Some of us can't tell simply by listening that the note entered was really an F rather than a G (which use the same finger on a qwerty keyboard). When my score gets huge I turn off the playback because it plays the note too long while its thinking about what I just did. And if it unexpectedly jumps to the next measure because I accidentally pressed the 6 for a 1/2 note rather than 5 for a 1/4 note and the last 2 beats got filled, backspace doesn't move the screen back to where it was before I entered the note I deleted with it. One more missing word processor action, if I do scroll away from the cursor and start entering notes, the screen does not jump back to the cursor. The screen just sits there while I type. A decent word processor would redraw the screen with the cursor on it. Why would I scroll? Perhaps I don't remember making the note on the same beat for the flute an F# and now the violin is playing in unison and it needs an F#, so I scroll up to the flute, see it is fine and now I have to scroll back down past 25 other instruments to see the violin again. The cursor is still sitting there waiting for the next note, but I won't see anything until I scroll back to it. In a word processor I use the knowledge that this will happen to put the cursor back on my screen. Hit a random key and backspace so I can see where I was. It would be nice to be able to do this in MS as well.

It should not be that difficult to make an awareness check for the display. What was the last note entered? It's in a list somewhere so undo can get rid of it. Where is the cursor? The program already knows that. Are we in continuous view? If so, they should both be visible and next to each other until the user either clicks somewhere else or scrolls to a new location. If he selects undo, the action should take place and the screen moved to that point as needed with the option of manually doing the same thing you just undid. This puts the cursor and display exactly where it was before the undid action was performed. If he scrolls, the cursor is still in the same spot so if he changes the score (new note, rest, tuplet, accidental...) the display should return to that spot. All of these are normal word processing expectations. If page view is selected and the last note of the last measure on the page is entered, the programmer will have to make a decision if the last note will show up with the cursor highlighting the end of measure barline, or if the scroll to the next page will happen. I prefer the barline being highlighted, but would understand if the next note location were chosen. The reason for the barline being highlighted is the same as having the last note entered displayed with the cursor. This is more consistent with what happen in a word processor as well. MS should be aware it did this and place the next note entered into the next measure with the appropriate redraw of the screen.

What I believe happens in the wild jumps is that the measure is recalculated and the display is redrawn based upon the size of the new measure. The program goes through its list of items to check for and if certain things are in the measure the score is drawn one way, if it is not in the measure it is drawn a different way, but the physical lengths of the measures are not necessarily different. I have attached a score of mine that shows something similar.

The following are instructions to see what I mean. Go to measure 262 and select the 2 1/16th notes in the flute (click and shift click) with staccato (the Eb and D). Toggle the staccato off (shift-s) and see what happens to the pagination. Toggle them back on and see what happens to the pagination. Why does it do this? I stated my theory above. I strongly suspect that this is related to the wild jumps that happen while entering notes into a score even though one is in continuous view and the other is page view.

With a little effort on the part of a programming contributor this issue should be able to be tracked down. I just had another thought about the cursor leaving the screen. While entering the above suggested score, at some point after a few measures have scrolled normally off the left side of the screen and the cursor is in the first visible measure, hit the backspace key a few times until the blue cursor disappears from the screen to the left. There is one of your bugs, but not necessarily the cause of the wild jump.

Hopefully this all makes sense. If there is something unclear, feel free to ask. I want this fixed.