Ending staff of cross-staff not report in status bar or by screen reader

• Feb 11, 2021 - 04:45
Reported version
3.6
Type
Functional
Frequency
Once
Severity
S5 - Suggestion
Reproducibility
Randomly
Status
active
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project

From the about box on Mac OS:
Revision OS: macOS 10.16, Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (64-bit): 3.6.2.548020600, revision: 3224f34

I think there is a bug in MuseScore when slurs cross staves. The descriptor that gets read out by the screen reader only indicates that the the first measure of the slur is involved but the playback includes all of the measures if you listen closely enough. If a slur is only on one staff across one or more measures, the screen reader output is correct and so is the text on the status bar. I get the same behavior from NVDA on Windows and VoiceOver on Mac.

Note: VoiceOver output on the Mac was done by placing the mouse cursor over the status bar and wiggling it after every change in item to get VoiceOver to re-read the entire status bar text again after it changed.

The attached file is what I received from my piano teacher and tested with on both platforms.

Can't tell you much more than that as I am a blind music student.

Further testing on the Mac:
Doesn't appear to be 100% repeatable. After restarting MuseScore and navigating though the score with Option-Right-Arrow and Option-Left-Arrow, the correct slur description is being read out. Over time, incorrect audio and status bar text appears.

In summary, there are two different problems I have heard while walking backwards and forwards through all items on the music sheet:
1. The staff identifier is wrong when a slur starts on one staff and ends on another, it always says staff 1.
2. If a slur is covering several measures, sometimes it incorrectly says the first measure is the only measure involved in the slur.

I haven't encountered any strange behaviors from slurs that are contained within a single measure or slurs that start and end on the same staff.

Attachment Size
Party_Time_Student_Part.mscz 11.19 KB

Comments

Title Incorrect slur identification with screen readers and the latest MuseScore 3.6.2 release Ending staff of cross-staff not report in status bar or by screen reader
Severity S4 - Minor S5 - Suggestion

Actually, I think we aren't even trying to read the end staff, we just read the start staff. It's confusing because we read it at the end, but that's all it is actually reporting - the start staff. But I agree it should report this. The status bar should always show both start and end, the screen reader should read start if it has changed from the last read element, and in the case of cross staff slurs, both staves should probably always be read.