For the development team

Here is a list of problems I encounter with MuseScore. I present them for you to accept or reject as you see fit. I will not be drawn into discussions because these have been unsuccessful in the past. The last session of exchanges was bizarre, even degenerating into personal insults.

Often, but not always, the program is slow to load on the first startup. 1.40 seconds timed on stopwatch last time.

Layout editing is complex and long-winded, requiring the tedious and time-consuming process of typing in coordinates. I still fail to get the results I seek. The spacing tools (arrows etc.) are sometimes useful, but often, not. Anchor points on the end of staves (staffs) are brilliant. Grab and move; job done.

Dynamics interfere with stave spacing, even after careful editing. It is VERY important, for example, that scores line up horizontally, especially along the base, which is sometimes extremely difficult to achieve. Conductors, too, often have to sight-read. It also looks untidy and un-professional if things don’t line up.

The palette items can be dragged around by the pointer tool and the system break tool keeps disappearing. I have to restart the program to get it back or switch to the master palette.

Menus, especially under ‘style’, should be in alphabetical order by default.

Text selection, cursor placement and text editing is a nightmare and the kerning is not good.

There are so many avenues for editing text. We just need a select and edit feature, whatever the text might be for. Only the placement of text (tempo, muted, etc.) needs to be controlled in this way.

Once selected, a font and size should always remain as default until changed.

Notes occasionally become invisible for reasons that are unknown to me.

The behaviour of the digits in page set-up is weird.

Conductor’s marks do not align vertically on the extracted parts and often touch the bar numbers.

The placement of dynamics is too detached from the stave, often occurring near the halfway point between staves.

The default size for part name and composer are different and the fonts sometimes have a mind of their own. My current projects use Edwin but sometimes they appear as Helvetica.

Accents are widely-separated from the note heads after changing bass to treble clef and not centred over the notes after changing to the new score style.

The slurs often misbehave and sometimes refuse to be re-shaped, even when deleted and re-applied.

The facility of toggling on/off with accents, especially staccato dots, would be useful. Deleting dots, especially when placed above the note head, is a difficult art.

The search facility in the help files often brings up unrelated results, regardless of how careful the search terms are chosen. I always Google my query which generally takes me to the appropriate MuseScore help page.

There needs to be standardization regarding the use of the words ‘staff’ or ‘stave’ and there are other text inconsistencies in the Help files.

The program always asks me if I want to save changes, whether or not there have been any made and its habit of quitting when a file is closed is something I’m still caught out by even after many years of using it.

Sometimes, when I save a file, it goes the ‘Save As’ route, asking me to name it and choose a location. I then have to save it under another name and double-check which one I want to keep.

Sometimes, when I close the program, I get a message saying the program quit and asking me if I want to file an error report.

The program sometimes places accents above the bar numbers in the top stave (staff) of the score.

I attach screenshots to illustrate some of the above problems.

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac14,2
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Core i5
Processor Speed: 3.2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 24 GB
Boot ROM Version: 431.140.6.0.0
SMC Version (system): 2.15f7
Serial Number (system): C02LQ31TF8J4
Hardware UUID: 33492266-9B8D-54CE-AD61-C0E5FE7AB029

Mac OS: Catalina 10.15.7 (19H15)

MuseScore 3