Score mirroring in right-to-left languages

This is an interesting. I actually don't know how right-to-left languages write music, but is somehow makes sense to have the score mirrored. Of course your time signature should display the numerals in normal fashion (but I realize this is a mockup).

This raises the question whether it would be valuable for MuseScore to have an option to flip music for readers of right-to-left languages, so that they can read notes and lyrics in the direction they are used to?

I've played written music in an Arabic country, but all the music was European, of course, so this was never a problem. I'm willing to bet that right-to-left languages have simply learned to deal with reading music left-to-right. But the most important thing is probably to make sure that text elements are able to properly display right-to-left text. (e.g. I noticed this bug: https://musescore.org/en/node/177081)

Shoogle, why do you assume this:
"This presents a challenge for people who mainly use a right-to-left language, such as Arabic or Hebrew, who have to learn to read music in the opposite direction to the one they are used to from reading text."

I live in Israel and neither myself nor fellow musicians, nor my many students have an issue with the music written from left to right.

The suggestion to mirror the music is like suggesting to read and write English text from right-to-left. Nobody would suggest that, I think.

And worse: if people learn to read music from right-to-left, and then they have to read "regular" music (e.g. if they buy regular music, go abroad, etc.) , they will not be able to read it. Instead of helping them, you created a problem.

It is a nice challenge for the developers, so if they want to do it for their fun, they can do it (although I would suggest to go to the beach instead, but this is only my preference...). But as far as I can see (and I am a professional musician, performer and teacher for many years) - there is no need for this feature in the real world. Even in the weird right-to-left world...

There must be a way to get feedback from a larger international community—StackExchange, a Facebook group, some other forum...

Hi all, I wanted to jump in to this forum because I have been looking for this exact feature. I am working with church music in Iraq. Generally the music, which is mostly printed in Lebanon, is written RtL to accommodate the languages (Syriac and Chaldean - eastern liturgical languages - as well as Arabic). These languages are "cursive" (all letters are connected) so writing them backwards is quite awkward. As people before me have mentioned, amateur singers here typically read lyrics without notes, and many musicians play strictly by ear, but there is also a written standard of RtL. (Incidentally, when you're used to reading languages in two directions, it's not so hard to read music in two directions too, it just takes a little getting used to.) So here's my vote that the developers do add this feature.

You can see in the attached score that symbols stay the same direction, including note heads and flags, so it's not just a matter of flipping the final product. (Although the rests are inconsistent for some reason.) Style markings are in standard Latin letters. This is a Syriac-language melody printed in Lebanon.

so musescore seems to be designed for "western" or "european" musical notation with left-to-right input and reading. i went to wikipedia and learned that there are/have been very many different notation systems.
maybe musescore could have a fork just for other notation styles including RTL, braille, ancient or the many forms found east and south of europe or even for the just plain "alternative" or experimental.

Here's an example from an 1873 Arabic hymnal. Not sure if Arabic musical notation has changed much over the last 150 years, but it's still interesting:

https://hymnary.org/page/fetch/TA1873/147/low

Oh, I have a solution: If you first write the music right-to-left. The go through a process of photoshopping left-to-right, then drop the images to in the beginning pages; you will have both formats in one .mscz file.

If R-to-L scores are implemented then it would be good do it properly and not by workarounds. A standard should be agreed and then implemented consistently across all applicable aspects of MuseScore, e.g. note entry, beams, ties, slurs, TAB entry, bar management, playback etc. so that it feels as natural to an R-to-L person as L-to-R scoring does for the rest of us.

Now I'm sure that this is no easy matter, but workarounds often leave the result feeling a bit unprofessional. They do have their uses but are better as short term fixes until a full implementation can be made.

Hi there everyone,

I know it's an old thread, but I thought why not put in my two coins.

This very topic has been achingly important for me some two decades ago, and I'm happy I could manage to write music Right-to-Left, but not using MuseScore, rather PMW, of course with the generous help of its author, Dr Philip Hazel (attached an excerpt of how things look).

But, more importantly, RTL music notation in my country (Egypt) was established not by any of us Egyptians, but by foreigners (!): European missionaries, realising that writing lyrics in Arabic, in reversed order, would only be too problematic for the typical hymn singer in a congregation. And things stayed that way until the turn of the century, when notation programmes became ubiquitous, leaving behind either hand-made manuscripts or type-set sheet music.

But I must also add that in mainstream music, practically no-one reads in that direction; perhaps only christians who read music.