MuseJazz font line spacing too wide

Thanks, it's there now...

The expected result is the same vertical distance between lines in 2.0 that there was in 1.3. I put the text directly on the staff to make this easier to judge :-). This first measure is staff text, BTW. The second is lyrics.

Here is how it looks for me on Ubuntu in 1.3:

And here it is in 2.0:

In both measures - the staff text and the lyrics - the line spacing has become wider in 2.0, which you can easily tell by comparing the positions of "Line 2" and "Line 3" in measure 1.

I think I have not explained myself clearly.

The problem is not the position of Line 1 in either measure. The problem is the *line spacing* - how far apart the lines are. That is, how much space there is *between* Lines 1 and Line 2, also Lines 2 and Line 3. They are too far apart. As I mentioned, it is most clear in the first measure of my example. In 1.3, Line 2 sits on top of the "G" staff line; in 2.0 it sits below the line. In 1.3, Line 3 touches the top of the staff; in 2.0 it is well below the staff. The spacing between lines is about 0.5sp too big in 2.0. This means that 1.3 scores with multi-line text in them won't look right; the text may collide with other elements. And it means text created in 2.0 will take up more room than they should.

Somehow I fear I still have not explained myself clearly enough.

The problem is only noticeable if you *compare* the results for the *same* text between 1.3 and 2.0. Simply looking at the 2.0 version, there is no way of knowing if the line spacing is too wide or not. It's only by comparing to 1.3 that you can see that line spacing has changed. So create that same example in 1.3 and you'll see the text lines will be significantly closer together than they are in your image above. Your example uses 10pt font, mine uses 12pt, and that's why your picture doesn't look like mine - it is comparing apples to oranges.

But there is no no need to create your own files to see this bug. Simply load my original file into both 1.3 and compare the spacing for yourself. You will see the that Line 1, Line 2, and Line 3 are *farther apart* in 2.0 than they are in 1.3, for the *exact same score*. This is what my two images show. Can you see the difference between those images? That is the problem I am trying to understand - why the text lines are farther apart in 2.0 than in 1.3 *for the exact same text*.

In my example, the font size in the first measure was 12pt. In 1.3, this meant that two lines of text were exactly 3sp apart, as my image from 1.3 shows - Line 1 and Line 2 sits exactly three staff lines apart. But if you load that *same file* into 2.0, or create your own using the *same font settings* (MuseJazz 12pt), you will see that two lines of text as now about 3.5sp apart rather than 3sp apart.

It might not seem like a big difference, but it's quite significant if you have a lot of text. It means the text will take up more space than it should.

Yes, indeed! Good, I guess, in that we should thus be able to learn the exact cause. Your help here will be very much appreciated!

I suspect it will probably either be a change in Qt version or the change I made shortly before the RC to fix a PDF export issue, although there other MuseJazz changes too.

Fantastic, thanks for the info! Still not sure what specifically about that change caused the issue or how to solve it, but as always, knowing where to look is an *immense* help!

OK, it *is* the new characters added that are causing this. Specifically, the SMuFL notes with stems up starting at U+e1d3 that we use for tempo markings. They are much taller than other charcaters - considerably taller than the actual Ascent for the font - and I guess somehow this messes up the calculation of line spacing.

Having a better understanding of the problem, now it should be a relatively simple matter to find a solution. But while I do expect I will find one by trial and error, I'd love to get feedback from someone who really understands fonts.

https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/1921

I simply removed the problematic SMuFL versions of the note glyphs, since we weren't using them anyhow (we use the Unicode versions, which sit within the descent/ascent. I did look into what is involved into forcing MuseScore to render a smaller line spacing despite glyphs that exceed the ascent/descent by a large amount, but the details of this look to be very platform-dependent and unreliable, and I wasn't getting anywhere in numerous attempts. Given that removing the glyphs solves the problem for now, that's my call.

Did you see my responses in #53401: Lyric margins and spacing not well-preseved importing 1.3 score? Your picture clearly shows the staff below *is* pushed further down - just not quite far enough. Also, those are not the default settings - you apparently used a template (which exist specifically to change the defaults), and from your other issue report, I believe that score may have been imported from 1.3? Anyhow, see my responses in the other issue, which explain what settings you need to adjust. Increasing Lyrics lower margin seems the most promising. If you still need help, please followup there, not here.

Fixed in 2.0.1 branch and 2.1 trunk.