Tantacrul - "Music Software & Interface Design: MuseScore"

Original review

YouTube video:

Points raised and our responses

MJS: Marc Sabatella

6:46 - Font dropdown colors

@Isaac Weiss - Regardless of the fate of the turquoise, getting rid of the red and black TT (TrueType?) icon next to every font in the list should solve the problem of the "ghastly" red+black+turquoise combination. See #288879: Remove "TT" icons from font dropdown.

6:54 and 11:23 - Depressed button color

@Isaac Weiss - Regression from MuseScore 2. See #288881: Better color for pressed buttons.

7:01 - Icons

MJS - Mostly the complaints seem to be about the file icons, maybe we could consider just replacing those?

tinman - The main complaint was that the icons don't seem consistent, with varying sizes and no clear grid system. The thing is, though, that all of the icons Tantacrul mentions were taken from the same icon set — the Material icon set, though an older version of it that was still licensed CC BY-SA (the newer version's license is incompatible with GPLv2). The icons are here, on the Icons page: https://www.figma.com/file/d4PsbNZ8UNB8wIYGqmuApoLv/MuseScore?node-id=1… . Feel free to duplicate the file and try to make the icons fit the grid better.

tinman - I added filled variants of the open and new file icons. There's also a new upload to cloud icon, from the Material design set. That still doesn't fix the inconsistency in grid size or in fill with e.g. clipboard icons, but that all comes from the original set.

10:28 - Color

Blue and similar colors are used to mean different things in different parts of the interface:

• Selections in Voice 1 are blue (we won't change this, but we could use a different shade of blue)
• Non-printable markings are light blue
• Styled Inspector properties are turquoise (disscussion moved here)

Some colors don't work well in combination:

• Depressed toolbar buttons have blue icons on a dark grey background (raised more than once, see above)

MJS - these colors were actually changed in response to this. I have insight into whether the issue "solved", but it's worth another look.

11:37 - "Preponderance" of icons and buttons in Text Inspector

More or less addressed in PR #4559.

13:04 - MuseScore logo "wonky" (asymmetrical)

Addressed in PR #3269.

17:35 - Toggle visibility improvements

MJS - Not sure the wisdom of menus with toggles, but making better use of "Nothing select" Inspector is fine by me. Also right-click menu with nothing selected.

18:32 - Documents side-by-side

MJS - Disable when only one score is possible, but also consider showing File / Open in that case.
lasconic: It's useful with a single long score though. You can see the start and the end of the same score in the same screen...

tinman - I think the bigger problem here was with it being unclear what the "X" does. When the same document is open in two panes, closing one of the panes should keep the document open in the other pane. There should be no potential data loss.

19:11 - Instrument change

MJS - This is one of the few elements that still requires right-click menu. Would love to see this incorporated into Inspector. Also section break, what else? As for changing clef, not necessarily always wanted.

@RobFog - Name change addressed by Marc Sabatella in PR #4958. Also see #88861: Option for editing abbreviated staff names in instrument changes.

@Isaac Weiss - even if the whole dialog can't be put in the Inspector, at the very least, a button to launch it is a must. See #289006: Expose "Select Instrument" in Inspector for Instrument Change text. Addressed in PR #5010.

21:31 - File / Parts

MJS - Yes, it's a clumsy dialog for sure. Note: the button label is no longer "New All" :-)

23:26 - Tours

MJS - Not so sure about the "eye" - if you don't actually pop something up, most people won't notice it's there. But sure, the mechanism used to show tours could be improved further.

27:02 - Select note on delete slur or other marking

MJS - In general, a potentially good idea on several fronts to leave something selected after deleting something - good to keep keyboard navigation active. Do need to be careful though as sometimes this is unexpected - hitting Delete twice in a row would then delete the newly selected element.

@dmitrio95: added #287141: No element is selected after deleting slur or other marking to track this.

MJS - we've actually caught almost all cases at this point. And for the few cases where an action does result in loss of selection (measure join/split?), Alt+Left/Right now remembers the previous selection and continues navigation from there. So, a pretty big improvement on this front.

28:13 - Copy/paste dynamic/hairpin combinations

MJS - Right now we can copy lines using the "clone" facility used for custom palettes, but no one knows this, and it's not as convenient as what people would reasonably expect.

@dmitrio95: addressed in PR #4831

28:26 - Adjust multiple hairpins

MJS - Nice idea, not sure how that would work if they don't start out aligned?

28:53 - Copy/paste with overwriting of markings

MJS - See #45361: copy/paste and "R" do not delete slurs or lines in target measures

29:09 - Spacing adjustments

MJS - Direct dragging as a way of adjusting measure width or other spacing is achievable, in principle. Although for the record, I like having the possibility of more precise settings too.

@dmitrio95 - see https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/4930 for the patch on dragging notes.

MJS - after a couple of back-and-forths on this, I think it's good now.

29:41 - Change duration multiple

MJS - Would be easy enough to shorten multiple notes, not clear what should happen for lengthen, are we talking about lengthening the passage as well (eg, half-time/double-time)? Like requested in #278980: Augmentation/Diminution features?

MJS - This is implemented now,. but only for list selections. I wonder if there is a reason not to allow it for range?

29:51 - Note input on duration select

MJS - See #286360: Enter note entry mode when a note pad button is clicked. Not at all obvious this is really such an improvement - which measure do we start note input in? Or should it only be viable for input by click?

30:03 - Playback selection only

MJS - This is a reasonably common request. I could imagine not wanting the act of selection to change how playback works, but a special command like Shift+space to just play the selection could make sense.

@dmitrio95: a possible implementation: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/4933

MJS - This was meregd and then backed out because too many people did not like the change, but I'd still love to see this via a separate command (e.g., Shift+Space).

30:27 - Play whole chord on navigate

MJS - Already implemented in 3.0.5, via #283946: Play whole chord when iterating over notes with Left-Right arrows, nice job Anatoly!