musescore / musescore/MuseScore

Footnotes

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feature request
Dominant language
C++
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

My idea

I propose to implement in MuseScore Studio the ability to make footnotes in the score.

Example:
Снимок экрана (483)

Problem to be solved

Footnotes can be useful as an explanation of some complex performance instruction (or any other author's note) when there is no place for this within the system with dense musical textures often occurring.

Additional context

I recommend using symbols such as , **, † ††, etc.[^] as footnotes, but not numbers, which can be accidentally confused with fingering, bar numbers, and so on.

It would also be nice to be able to highlight any fragment in the score and give an explanation to it in the form of a footnote (including an image of the highlighted fragment itself). By the way, there is something resembling this in musescore.com

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/9243c305-44f2-451e-a33c-7bd212899070

[^*]: But at the same time, the user should be able to customize this, since other characters may be well-established in other languages.

Checklist

  • ✅ This request follows the guidelines for reporting issues
  • ✅ I have verified that this feature request has not been logged before, by searching the issue tracker for similar requests

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

The issue names no implementation files, tests, or entry points. Start by narrowing the scope between score footnotes, customizable markers, highlighted fragments, and embedded images; done requires an agreed design and acceptance criteria for the supported footnote behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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