Special characters - escapes and RNA
I would like to be able to put lines of RNA like the following:
C: I IV V vi
________ G:I ii
etc.
where underscore has been used above to set the layout
I know it can be done, but unfortunately the escape character which works for symbols like b (\b) does not work for a colon ':'. I know there is an escape character for colon in the context of RNA - but I can't remember what it is.
It would be very helpful if the same escape character could be used for all "unusual" characters in almost all contexts.
I know that it's possible to use the special symbol set, but I would not count a colon ':' as unusual.
I still remain critical of the way RNA has been implemented, but at least it would be useful to have up to date information of nitty gritty details like this.
Comments
The issue with "b" is with the Campania font - it was designed to optimize entry using the more common international standards - and because it's in the font, that's why backslash is the escape characters.
But the issue with colon is not about the font at all - Campania doesn't do anything special with that, it displays normally. It's just that colon on many keyboards is the same as Shift+semicolon, and thus it's the standard MuseScore shortcut for "navigate backwards one beat" and has been for many years, since long before anyone thought to implement RNA. So, you need to use the standard MuseScore method of overriding navigation keys - Ctrl (presumably Cmd on Mac keyboards). So, just like Ctrl+space or Ctrl+hyphoen or Ctrl+underscore is how you enter those characters into a lyric syllables, Ctrl+semicolon is how you enter a semicolon into RNA, and Ctrl+colon enters the colon. Or, you could redefine the "previous beat" command in MuseScore to use a shortcut other than Ctrl+Shift+semicolon.
Because the limitations come from different source - the font versus the navigation commands - it's unfortunately impossible to make the override consistent. What works for fonts doesn't work for commands and vice versa.