"Hard" line break across all parts
Currently, when parts are exported, only the part on the top line includes the line breaks.
If you want all the parts to have the line breaks in the same place, you have to manually change the part order and re-export.
Ideally, I would love to see a "hard" line break for scores that forces all parts to include the line break at the same measure. Or maybe a right-click option on the current line break?
I know that different parts should break based on spacing, but there are some cases where it helps to have the ensemble all have the same number of lines / have the ensemble all on the same line.
Thanks! MuseScore is great all around!
Comments
The work going into formatting the parts is immense! Maybe there could be a "hard" option, but think about this:
![Part Break.png]( "Part Break.png")
Say you have 4 trumpets and 4 trombones. The trombones may play little, only reinforcing the trumpets. Then you would need much different breaks for the trbs'! Actually, each stave should have optional breaks that would have no effect on the main score layout, but take effect in the part. Something like this:
In reply to I second this. by TromboRafi
To be clear: breaks added while viewing the part *already* affect only that part, just as one would normally want. The ability to set a "hard" break thayt affects score and parts is definitely more of a special-case application, but I could see it happening in some situations often enough to favor the idea of having a flag you can set on a break to make it affect all parts.
In reply to To be clear: breaks added by Marc Sabatella
I don't think it is that special.
In orchestra or bigband ensembles as you know there often are four or more same instruments. often also they play at the same time, and pause at the same time.
in that case, the part-only breaks could simply be applied to the corresponding instruments one time, and then every repeated export would not loose them.
In reply to I don't think it is that by TromboRafi
Even so, all it takes is one little difference in musical content - a solo part, or just a slightly different rhythm, maybe, or even just different number of accidentals - between two parts for the layout to be affected such that line breaks to no longer necessarily make sense. I guess in very simplistic music this sort of uniformity might be the norm - music for elementary or middle school ensembles, etc. Still, this is probably the minority of all music. And we're still talking about breaks being shared one "section" at a time - not a global hard break. So I'm not sure a "hard break" option would really even help with these cases unless we further complicated the interface to allow one to select which parts each break applied to. But really, the existing way of applying breaks - click barline, press Enter - is so lightweight, it's hard for me to imagine any GUI we created to allow users to select which parts are affected by which break being *easier* than simply adding the breaks part by part.
I would acknowledge that something like Finale' "staff lists" - where you specify a group of related staves to apply some action or property to - could make selecting which instruments to apply a break too at least no *worse* than doing it part by part. And the idea of being able to have different *style* settings for different staff lists is appealing to me. So vocal parts in a mixed score could have dynamics above staff, rhythm section parts in a big band have voltas and system text higher than normal to clear chord symbols, etc.
Not sure what you mean about "every repeated export" - there will normally be one and only one generation of linked parts. And no export at all - except maybe to PDF, which of course won't lose anything.
I'm bumping this feature request, because musescore.com's implementation of "Download -> PDF including parts" produces pdfs missing line breaks and page breaks in parts, just like the desktop program does, which according to the above discussion and https://musescore.org/en/node/16559 sounds like the expected behavior. But, even though Marc and most people might prefer the default to be as is, from searching it appears like there are many other people including myself who intentionally put line breaks at very deliberate locations and want these breaks to persit in parts. For example, I always put breaks at the end of phrases, repeat signs, before every rehearsal mark, and where I want a consistent line to reference in rehearsal which means that I often remove a lot of strech so that breaks occur only where I want them to. One workaround is to use "Section Breaks" which do persist across parts, but those create a delay in playback and also recreate clefs and key signatures (which may not be intended), so my workaround has always been to manually remove instruments from my main score before printing each part, but I fear with this new musescore.com feature that musicians might try to read their part from the automatically-generated "PDF including parts" if I don't explictly tell them to not to.
I think it is also a bit misleading for Line/Page Breaks be called "Line/Page Breaks" when they really are specifically "Line/Page Breaks for current part" only.
Maybe this request be rewritten along the lines of: "Checkbox Option for Persistent Line Breaks, Page Breaks in General Styles"?
A lot of my frustration also goes for the Songbook app (which removes all breaks, both in main score and parts) so I tell people to not try to read my scores on that app. Can I make another feature request "option for allowing line breaks to persist when viewed in mobile app"?
In reply to I'm bumping this feature by ericfontainejazz
Maybe a "System Flag" checkbox could be added to Line/Page breaks, unset by default, which when checked would apply to all generated parts. This would be consistent with the interpretation of text that has the "system flag" set (e.g. "System Text").
In reply to Maybe a "System Flag" by ericfontainejazz
Ok there are several things going on here.
1/ About the songbook app, the new version of the app 1.9 now uses the original layout of the song by default, so page breaks and line break should be respected by default. There is still a "flow" mode if users want to zoom. I hope it's one less reason to discourage people to use the free MuseScore app or the Songbook app.
2/ About Parts extraction on MuseScore.com. If you define parts in your scores, and you put the linebreak where they should be in the parts then MuseScore.com will respect them and they can be different or similar to the part. It's the only valid workaround for the moment. It's not just about line breaks btw. Still a lot of things (manual adjustments of the position of elements for example) are not linked to the parts and the automatic generation cannot be perfect currently, so the best way to have clean parts it's to define them in MuseScore and tweak them.
3/ Layout breaks (line, page, section) already have the system flag internally and it's on. It's the reason why they appear at the top of the system in the score and they apply to all the staves of a system. The fact they are not linked to part is a different matter and it would need another flag.
In reply to Ok there are several things by [DELETED] 5
1. I appreciate the update!*
2. That workaround works, thanks!**
3. Can I add a feature request to allow user to toggle "link to part" flag for section breaks?
* (curiously, the app respects the line/page breaks when viewing individual instruments, I suppose because the mobile app is not actually generating new parts but rather simply hiding the instruments that aren't selected.)
** (It's not easy to copy a lot of breaks. I am able to right-click a break and select all similar elements and press "Copy", but am unable to "Paste" the line breaks.)
In reply to 1. I appreciate the by ericfontainejazz
Section breaks need to apply to score and parts. If they don't, this would need to get fixed