Improve Delete measure

• Jan 29, 2019 - 22:10
Reported version
3.0
Type
Functional
Frequency
Once
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Always
Status
closed
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project
MuseScore

There are two issues left after renaming "Timewise Delete" to "Remove Selected Measures"

  1. In the right click menu the shortcut is omitted after Delete Selected Measures. The shortcut is listed of all other actions with defined shortcuts.

  2. This option shows up on the right click menu as long as one complete measure is selected. If you have an extra beat in the measure before and/or after the selected measure, everything selected is deleted. Since I understand Timewise delete, I understand why this happens. I fear the average user will accidentally do this, and not understand that Timewise Delete does this, and is what is actually used.

I think the best solution for this issue is to reduce the selection only to complete measures that are selected when the shortcut is used and then forget about 1 above.

I'm willing to wait to see if I'm right about confusion. If there is no confusion then I suggest you implement #1.

Comments

• Jan 29, 2019 - 22:31

I suspect that the most common use cases will be to delete complete measures or else just a single beat or subset of a single measure. That is, intentionally deleting three and a quarter measures will probably be rare. As long as we don't break the single note case I'm fine with rounding off selections of larger than measure.

Reply

• Jan 30, 2019 - 16:47

  1. The missing shortcut is because the action does not have one, and it can't be configured to have one. This is due to a non-standard (i.e. poor) implementation.

  2. The name maybe should be "Delete selected range", since that is what it does.
    In principle I think a function should always work on the elements selected, and highlighted, so I think it is fine 'as is' , if it is just renamed.

If we want this function to delete measures, it should only be available if the selection consistent if whole measures.

Reply

• Jan 30, 2019 - 16:55

A rose by any other name...

The result is the same if you use the shortcut ctrl+del or the right click menu, so it looks like timewise delete lies under both. Select a few beats in a measure, the complete next measure, then a few beats in the following measure and you get a timewise delete in both cases. It sounds like there was a waste of code to make it do the same thing in both cases.

I would prefer to see a delete selected measures that adjusts the selection to only the complete measures selected and then deletes only those measures.

Reply

• Jan 30, 2019 - 19:48

You are right. I checked deeper, and it is a duplicate way of invoking the same code, so "Delete selected measures" really should be replaced by "Timewise delete". This wil also make the shortcut Ctrl+del show up in the menu.

What you are suggesting would be a new "Delete measures" function, which is something that we don't have.
I don't think Timewise Delete should be modified to work that way.

Reply

• Jan 30, 2019 - 21:03

Timewise delete has it's purpose that can be very useful to writing some music and fixing pickup measures especially. What I'm saying is that the "Delete selected measure" command should do just that and not blindly call "Timewise delete" and delete anything except complete measures.

Reply

• Jan 31, 2019 - 07:23

Please don't just claim that to be the case, try it. I just did, again, to verify: Only if one or more complete measures are selected that entry is in the right-click menu, if your selection contains a partial measure it does not.

Reply

• Jan 31, 2019 - 21:41
Status active ⇒ PR created

Looks like I was wrong here. selecining a note or range and than rightclicong into an empty space in the staff, outside the selection(!) eneables that menua and deletes that selection

See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/4611
The needed changes is not yet in that PR though, but will be, after we agreed on the desired wording, at FOSDEM coming weekend

Reply

• Jan 31, 2019 - 21:42
Status PR created ⇒ active

As I have responded in Replace 'Delete selected measures' by 'Timewise Delete' the option to 'Delete selected measures' can be available for any selected orange of notes.
The result of using the function, compared to version 2.3 :

  • Select a full measure and some notes at the start of next measure
    V.2: Delete both measures
    V.3: Delete the selected notes
  • Select some notes at the end of a measure and the start of the next
    V.2: No action
    V.3: Delete the selected notes
  • Select a single note
    V.2: No action
    V 3: Delete the selected note

As can be seen the behaviour is quite different from v.2, so users expecting it to work the same as before may be confused.
It is equally clear that it does not do what it says. It 'Removes the selected range' (i.e. Timewise delete), and not 'selected measures'.

I can see these possible options:
1. Leave as is
2. Remove completely from the context menu, and just use Ctrl+del.
3. Re-instate the 'Delete selected measures' function from 2.3
4. Replace it by 'Remove selected range'

As noted earlier my suggestion is no. 4, since this is the most powerful/flexible command. It will tell users what to expect, and it will also have a configurable shortcut.

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Fix version
3.1.0