Question about Text Styles and Text Types
I'm a new user of MuseScore (attempting to dump Finale finally) and I've got a newbie question about text styles.
I write for an ensemble for whose repertoire I use a numbering system where each song gets a 3-digit catalog number. I'd like to print this number in the upper-right corner of the first page of the document, in a particular location and in a particular font. In the File...Info dialog box, there's a tag called "workNumber", which I'm assuming is intended for this purpose. (I don't see any documentation of the purpose of "workNumber", so I'm really just guessing.)
It seems that I need to create a Text Style to accomplish this, and I'm going to want to anchor the text to the page, rather than to a note position or time position in a staff or system.
Consulting the documentation at https://musescore.org/en/handbook/text-style-0#text-types , I see that there are various "text types" that are anchored in various ways, however I don't see a property in the text style property pane to govern where the text should be anchored.
Is there a way that I can choose which "text type" will apply to my new "text style", or is there some other way to control the anchoring behavior of a text style?
--Solomon
Comments
First - are you per chance the Solomon Douglas I knew from many years back? If so, hello, and nice to see you here! Either way, welcome!
If I understand correctly what you want, I think the most straightforward thing to do is simply add a text element to the title frame (right click the frame, Add / Text). This anchords the text to that frame. Then you can right click the text, Text Properties, and set it to right alignment and give it whatever horizontal / vertical offset you want form there. If it's just a single piece of text per score, it's probably not worth creating a text style.
On the other hand, if you are creating lots of these scores from a single template, then sure, creating a text style so you can assign the text style to that piece of text more easily (just select the style in the Inspector after adding the text) would save a few clicks and help ensure consistency.
In reply to First - are you per chance by Marc Sabatella
I'm the very one. You belong to a very small class of people whom I met online more than half my lifetime ago and am still in contact with. :)
I do intend to create lots of similar scores from the same template. I'm still confused about how templates work; the standard templates don't seem to include the title frame at all. Is it added by the setup wizard or is it somehow invisible in the template? How would I "right click the frame" in the template if the frame isn't in the template?
I'm sure I'm going to ask lots of questions here that exhibit my confusion rather than making sense. I hope you'll bear with me.
Solomon
In reply to I'm the very one. You belong by Solomon Douglas
I'm sure you'll pick things up quickly enough!
You are right that the title frame is not part of the template. Or, more particularly, the contents of the frame itself are not used when creating a new score from a template - just its properties. So you can't pre-add text to the title frame and expect to show up in scores created from that template. The title frame is generated when you create a new score, but its dimensions and other properties are copied. Well, in the current development builds, anyhow - not sure if that chage was made post-2.0.1 or not.
Anyhow, what I mean is this:
To create a template, set up one score exactly how you want, including with a new Text Style that you have defined (call it, say, "Work Number") that you create by first editing the Frame Text style, clicking New, and changing the alignment, offset, or other fields as you like. You can then add the text to the title frame. Title frames are created automatically wehn you create a title, so if you start a new score with no title, then you don't get a title frame. But you can get one - just go to Add / Text / Title. Or insert plain old vertical frame in front of the first measure. Now you have a frame you can right click, Add / Text, and use the Inspector to change the style to Work Number, which will make it display top right (or however you defined in the text style). If you don't like what you see, you can right click that element, Text Style, and tweak it further.
Once you are satisfied with your template, save it normally to your Templates folder. Next time you start MuseScore, this will appear in the wizard when creating a new score. Again, you won't actually get a title frame if you don't enter a title (or subtitle, composer, etc), but that's OK - you can add one later. Once your new score has a title frame, you can add the work number just like you did for the template itself, and the text style you defined for the template will be available.
BTW, I don't know that MuseScore cares what you use those meta data tags for. They come predefine I think because other software uses similar tags and there MusicXML defines such an element. Apparently it is intended to used for things like opus number of classical pieces. Seems your use is consistent enough with this, but unless you plan to add that number to the header (which would make it appear on *every* page), there really is no particular reaosn to fill in that meta data tag.