Flip stem doesn't work after editing the beam

• Aug 17, 2009 - 05:46
Type
Functional
Severity
3
Status
closed
Project
MuseScore

As reported by TVG : http://musescore.org/en/node/2415

The command 'x' to flip the stem doesn't work in beamed notes after the beam has been edited (moved up or down).

Reproduce:
1. Open the document "Test.mscz "
2. Double-click the first beam in the first bar
3. Move one of the handles up or down
4. Click elsewhere
5. Click on the first note of the beam
6. Type 'x': nothing happens

When steps 2-4 are left out, everything works fine.

Tested on: MuseScore 0.9.5, Mac OSX 10.5.8, iBook G4.

Comments

• Aug 20, 2009 - 17:17
Severity ⇒

This behaviour is intentional. Once you modified the beam, its position is "user defined" and "flip" has no meaning anymore for the layout routine. If you reset the beam by selecting and entering Ctrl+R then flip-x does work again.
For cross staff beams flip-x also has no meaning as usually the beam is positioned between upper and lower staff notes.
When moving the beam up/down with the first handle in edit mode the note stems are set automatically right.

Question is to change behaviour of "flip" to always delete all user settings first and the actually swich to standard layout "up" or "down".

Reply

• Aug 21, 2009 - 02:14

Finale and Sibelius have different algorithms for handling this situation as described in the screenshots below. Both Finale and Sibelius remember the original position if you flip the stems twice.

My order of preference from favorite to least favorite
1. Finale's method: Seems to work best for most situations
2. Your proposed change: Looks OK but forgets the user customizations
3. Sibelius' method: It can look funny when you flip the stem once, but it remembers the original position if you flip twice
4. Current behavior: Beam must be manually dragged in order to flip.

Attachment Size
beam flip (Finale).png 204.92 KB
beam flip (Sibelius).png 50.35 KB

Reply

• Sep 22, 2009 - 20:17
Severity ⇒
Status (old) fixed ⇒ active

Pressing X has no visual effect on the score. (Although it does change the listed stem direction in the Note Properties dialog)

Reply

• Sep 22, 2009 - 21:15

If you select a beam and then press x, the beam direction should always flip. The beam direction is three state: automatic, up or down. If "automatic", then the beam direction is determined by the majority of the chord stem direction. If you select a note and press x, you flip the chord stem direction which not necessarily flips the beam direction. It does always work if all chord stem directions are "automatic" except the one you flipped to up or down which has precedence. It may not work if several chords are manually set to "up" or "down". This is unexpected and should probably be changed. A solution could be to implement flipping the stem direction of a beamed chord as flipping the beam direction and not the chord stem direction.

Reply