Sticky pages or selections.
Is there a way in Musescore to render the presentation of selected page(s)/system(s)/bar(s) sticky ? In other words, make that selection constantly visible in page or continuous views. In Excel speak, this is called Freezing Panes/Rows/Columns.
An example of use of this feature is to keep a selected fragment of a score always visible while writing variations (or repetitions) of that fragment that are distant in the score and for which regular scrolling would hide those fragments.
Comments
No built-in way, but you can grab a quick screenshot or export to PDF or whatever and open that in another window that you also keep open and possible make that window sticky or however your OS does it (in ChromeOS, it's called "float").
In reply to No built-in way, but you can… by Marc Sabatella
Yes, for simple viewing exporting a PDF and displaying it in another window is what I do as a workaround, but it is far from satisfactory. In particular, when viewing two fragments of a score, it would be of great help to be able to edit both, cut/paste between them, and above all to play any part of both fragments to listen to differences while editing. Since so many music pieces contain distinct near-repeated fragments, one would think that such a feature should be part of any music notation software.
In reply to Yes, for simple viewing… by prigault
I can certainly this being a useful feature, so perhaps others can chime in here as well to help flesh out how this might work, and then if a consensus is reached, someone can open an issue on GitHub to request it.
Meanwhile, though, there are other options still that could be of use. One is to use the Parts facility and set up two parts with your source and destination. Then you can have each party focused on the appropriate region of the score, and you can easily flip back and forth between the tabs.
In reply to Yes, for simple viewing… by prigault
Musescore 3.6 and 3.7 can do all this, allowing several tabs to be shown side by side. MS3 can exist alongside MS4, and can open MS4 files if you first save them as xml.
My PC is too old to run MS4 but even if it could I would still keep MS3 as well — the tab feature is indispensable for my work.
In reply to Musescore 3.6 and 3.7 can do… by Brer Fox
MU3 can only show two at once, that's not really "several". And it's limited to just a split screen across the entire horizontal or vertical. So it's not really a good solution to the more general problem of wanting a specific passage only to be highlighted. But it's certainly a useful feature in itself and worth reimplementing if no one comes up with a more suitable design.
In reply to MU3 can only show two at… by Marc Sabatella
Sorry, I wasn’t very clear. It can only DISPLAY two scores side-by-side at any one time, but you can have more tabs with other scores or parts of the score, ready to be viewed at any time and copied/pasted. It goes some way to meeting the OP’s request:
“ An example of use of this feature is to keep a selected fragment of a score always visible while writing variations (or repetitions) of that fragment that are distant in the score and for which regular scrolling would hide those fragments.”
I use the tab feature regularly - it may not be ideal but could still save the OP quite a lot of time in certain circumstances.
In reply to Sorry, I wasn’t very clear… by Brer Fox
You can have as many scores as you want open in MU4 too, but that has no bearing on what's being discussed here. Actually. to the extent it does, the MU4 method of putting the scores in separate windows is far superior, because it opens the door to having two windows open. But currently you can't do this for different views of the same score - only for two different scores.
MU4 does allow multiple tabs for views of parts within the same score, and it's far more flexible than MU3 in this, as they can be opened and closed at any time and you can easily add and remove instruments. That's why I suggested exactly that as a possible method.
In reply to You can have as many scores… by Marc Sabatella
I am writing for an ensemble (quartet, band, orchestra), so when you say "parts", that would mean considering the entire ensemble as a part and duplicating it into another part to view the same ensemble in both tabs. Is that doable easily in MU4 ?
In reply to I am writing for an ensemble… by prigault
And also " flip back and forth between the tabs" is precisely what I would want to avoid (there is no way I can remember all the information when switching), the tabs you describe would have to be viewed simultaneously side by side for that workaround to work. In fact, viewing tabs side by side is something I often wish I could do when parts end up occupying only one page and half of my screen is empty space.
In reply to And also " flip back and… by prigault
I'm not sure what you mean about "remembering" - the flip is a single click. So go to the score, select what you want and press copy, then click the tab for the part, and paste. What would you need to remember? Which instrument you just copied from? Surely you can remember that for the fraction of a second it takes to change tabs? Maybe I'm not understanding.
In reply to I'm not sure what you mean… by Marc Sabatella
What I meant was that the important thing for me in order to edit two similar score fragments (a phrase or section, so at least several measures, with several instrument, dynamics and other features) to create a variation is to be able to constantly scan between these two fragments to narrow what I want the variation to be (is it changes in melody, a chord, dynamics, etc. ?). Switching back and forth is not an option because my eyes would have to capture and remember too many things from one fragment to the other (even with an action triggered by a simple keyboard shortcut, as in this case a mouse move and click greatly detracts attention). That is why my current workaround is to put a PDF on the side.
In reply to I am writing for an ensemble… by prigault
Yes, just create a new part from the Parts window and add all the instruments to it from the Instruments panel by clicking their visibility icons. Or just the ones you are actively working on for any given series of edits - it's equally easy to add and remove instruments on the fly. Definitely one of the nicer features of MU4.
In reply to Yes, just create a new part… by Marc Sabatella
I tried that and yes, it is super easy. The new parts inherits the default layout and positions of elements, so the exact appearance might be different from the main score. This doesn't solve the simultaneous aspect of things raised by my initial question, BUT ... having an easy way to create a distinct layout for the same score/part is SUPER COOL, and addresses another of my wishes: producing versions of scores optimized for different outputs (e.g. Letter/A4/Tablet). Many tanks for this ;-)