Settable Defaults for Curve Direction
Elaine Gould's wonderful book on notation is said to be a reference for the working design of MuseScore.
Gould's book is preceded by the excellent 'Music Notation' by Gardner Read (published by Gollancz). Following his recommendations, I end up with gorgeous-looking scores which (usually) delight players.
A killer feature request for MuseScore for me, would be the ability for users to be able to set a default direction for slurs and phrase marks, according to the direction of the head of the first note of the phrase.
Gardner Read makes it clear: that the default direction for a slur or phrase mark is that the curve ALWAYS begins from the side of the HEAD of the first note of the phrase. Everything else around, moves to accommodate this. The only exception is in writing where separate voices are close to each other, and phrase marks have to jump to the side of the tail of the note.
Thus:
A. Phrase Direction Correct:
B. Phrase Direction Incorrect:
Please could it be possible to set MuseScore to default as described? It would save those users who follow Gardner Read, hours and hours of work flipping curves of type B above, which MuseScore's 'Auto' setting currently often produces.
Comments
Can you share the exact quote from Read? FWIW, Gould's rule is "When groups of mixed stem direction are encompassed by a slur, place the slur above the stave" (there is more to her rule than that, but that's the relevant part here). Are you sure Read doesn't say anything about mixed stem directions? Your "correct" version looks bad to me, and would likely collide with dynamics, which I think is the basis for Gould's rule (she states so explicitly in other cases).
If he does indeed say to go with slur below even in the presence of mixed stems, then it would indeed seem worth adding a style option for this.