Tablet friendly UI
I have just opened an official feature request for this in the issue tracker and am posting a link here to provided an easy means for others interested to access it:
As requested the issue is closed pending discussion here:
WHat follows is the original text in that feature request, copied here for ease of access.
I have just acquired an Acer Iconia Tablet PC running Windows 7 Pro.
One of my first actions was to install Musescore 1.2 on it.
This is where I discovered how difficult it is to operate MuseScore without a mouse and standard keyboard.
Many of the icons used for accessing menus etc are not big enough for operation by touchscreen, and require repeated pressing before you hit the right spot to activate them. In particular the action area of the Play button on the main toolbar is not big enough to activate.
Editing and tune creation can be done pretty effectively with the onscreen keybaord, but you find that the action buttons of dialogue boxes are obscured by the keyboard, even if in "floating" mode, thus needing much manipulating of windows to get at them. This can also be a problem on netbooks where the vertical resolution is 600 pixels.
Perhaps these factors could be borne in mind during the next redesign of the MuseScore UI. I will add other comments here as I find them.
I have yet to explore the nightly builds of 2.0 on this machine - will report back when I do
MuseScore 1.2/ Windows 7 Pro on an Acer Iconia W500P Tablet
Comments
I think it would have been better the other way around. Create and animate a discussion here and when we have something workable open a feature request. The forum is more suitable for discussion. The issue tracker will become crowded.
I let you close the issue in the issue tracker and edit this forum post. Have a good discussion here and let's design a good UI.
As a side note, I think it's not possible to create a good touch UI that is also used with a mouse. So I think the UI should be customizable or it should be another version of MuseScore.
Last point, in MuseScore 1.2, you can make some toolbar buttons bigger in Preferences -> General -> bottom right.
I have had some experience using (demo-ing, mostly) MuseScore on my iPad via Splashtop (remote desktop software), and certainly agree the current interface is not ideal. Of course, eventually, many of us would love to see a tablet-friendly UI designed from the ground up as a native app. But I have given some thought to how the existing interface could be tweaked to allow it to be more tablet friendly as is, so running it via remote desktop software would be more viable. I hadn't even realized that tablets that could run MuseScore natively already existed, but that's all the more reason to want to consider some of these tweaks.
For me, the most important problem to solve is note entry. That's what I think the majority of time spent using MuseScore on a tablet would be spent on. Right now, none of the existing note input methods work well on tablets. The need to manually open and close the keyboard, and the fact that this operation is not automatically synchronized with enterting and leaving note entry mode, makes keyboard entry frustrating. Yet staves display too small for "mouse"-based entry to work well, and zooming in/out is awkward in that the when you are in note entry mode, the pinch motion you'd otherwise use for zooming actually adds notes.
As I see it, the easiest solution would be to expand the existing note entry toolbar to include the letters A-G plus icons for certain other specific operations used in note input: raise/lower pitch, add note to chord, etc, so that one could essentially type using that dedicated palette.
Of course, it should also be possible to increase the size of controls - maybe something automatic in MuseScore that checks the resolution of the display then bumps up the sizes of all UI elements (menus, palettes, etc). But really, it's this expanded note entry toolbar that I would be most concerned with. So even an option to just increase the size of that palette would be useful.
Lots of other improvements would be possible, of course, but I think making note entry work better should be the starting point.
In reply to I have had some experience by Marc Sabatella
A to G, up, down, right left, the new panel you are proposing will quickly look like a keyboard :)
In reply to A to G, up, down, right left, by [DELETED] 5
how about a one-octave piano keyboard (possibly having the note names engraved) plus left and right arrow.
In reply to how about a one-octave piano by Jojo-Schmitz
Similar to what 2.0 already has? Not bad. although I'd still want a way to choose enharmonic spelling of accidentals. Add a button to flip enharmonic spelling (something I want anyhow) and a piano keybaord would be great. But in addition to left and right arrows, we still need a way to change octave and to add notes to current chord, so that's a few more buttons.
In reply to Similar to what 2.0 already by Marc Sabatella
I didn't know 2.0 has a piano keyboard.
How do you access that??
I'm refraining from running nightlies on my new machine as it has an SSD hard-drive and I want to minimise writes to keep it fast until I can get hold of a utility which will TRIM the empty spaces and return them to unallocated spaces.
I do, however, have a copy of the last WIndows nightly running on it for comparisons, but will not be installing them weekly as on my Sony Vaio.
In reply to I didn't know 2.0 has a piano by ChurchOrganist
Display -> Piano or press P
In reply to Display -> Piano or press P by [DELETED] 5
Yes, this is the answer to note entry, but the keys are too small for operation by touch - would it be possible to change its width to suit the user?
In reply to A to G, up, down, right left, by [DELETED] 5
That's not out of the question, actually. Really, one of the only reasons I don't just leave the keyboard up full time when running MuseScore via Splashtop is that MuseScore is unaware there is a keyboard covering half the screen, so it doesn't scroll the display as necessary. Give me a built in keyboard palette and I could do a lot.
But I do think it's possible to go a long ways with just an additional dozen or so icons.
My primary goal in acquiring the Tablet was for performing scores direct from MuseScore.
Consequently Page Layout and settings are my primary concern - there is currently a lot of wasted space in some of these dialogues which means the action buttons end up being hidden under the task bar - this has happened to me when working on my netbook which is restricted to a 600 pixel vertical resolution, and is a faff to workaround.
Trying to operate spin buttons on the margin settings dialogue is also very poor at the moment - is there a way of increasing their size?
In reply to My primary goal in acquiring by ChurchOrganist
My sense is that the work that is progressing on having a native Player app - at least for iOS and Android - will take care of most of the need for ability to playback scores from tablets. Unfortunately, I don't know that Windows 7 is part of that effort.
But even for those of us concerned more with score creation than playback, layout controls are, after note entry, the next most important thing that could be improved for tablet use. Again, needing to manually pop up the keyboard, and then having it cover half the screen without MuseScore's knowledge, means that what might otherwise be simple copy/paste operations or adding of line breaks or other layout controls require more extensive use of the already-small GUI controls.
In a way that is really hard to explain or appreciate without seeing it, one might compare this to how well Audacity works on a tablet (again, in my case, via remote desktop software like Splashtop). It's actually quite a bit nicer to use than any of the native audio apps I have installed - really quite amazing. Almost like they had planned it this way all along (which I'm sure they didn't), things like selecting regions and operating controls work just as well via touch as via mouse/keyboard. Well, maybe a larger play button would still be nice.
I still don't know if any of this really worth pursuing or if a full fledged native table interface makes more sense, of course.
In reply to My sense is that the work by Marc Sabatella
Personally I think that you should be able to customise the UI in such a way that it can be used easily either in the traditional mouse/keyboard mode, or in Tablet mode.
You should then be able to save the UI configuration in a template file so that you can easily flip between the two when necessary eg - the Acer I have just bought has a keyboard dock (should be arriving next week ) so it can be used in the traditional manner. So being able to choose between Tablet and keyboard/mouse UI wopuld be perfect so you can use tablet mode when you're on the road and mouse/keyboard mode when you're back home or another location convenient to dock it into the keyboard.
UI customisation templates would also be useful to situations where more than one user of a computer wants to use MuseScore - at the touch of a finger (or click of a mouse) they can pull up their own UI customisation features from the list.
And yes, I too noticed how well Audacity works from a touch screen UI
One weakness in the existing UI is that it doesn't respond to the navigational flicks present in the touchscreen interface. Consequently page to page navigation isn't possible without the navigator, and the infinitely variable Zoom I constantly using during editing using CTRL+Scroll Wheel is not available.
It is essential is to be able to turn pages with a flick
Zoom isn't quite so important unless you are editing, in which case it is also essential.
There also needs to be some mechanism designed to replace the Shift+Select and CTRL+Select functions which are an important feature of many editing functions in MuseScore.
More comments later as I find them.
In reply to One weakness in the existing by ChurchOrganist
There is nothing done currently for touch event in MuseScore. Any interested developer, who owns a windows 7 touch device, could check QTouchEvent and Gesture programming. Implementing all these features without a device or at least a simulator is like hunting in the dark.
In reply to One weakness in the existing by ChurchOrganist
In the nightlies, you should be able to pinch to zoom in/out. The code has been added some time ago.
In reply to In the nightlies, you should by [DELETED] 5
Indeed it does react momentarily, but returns immediately to the default set in zoom in the toolbar.