Improve articulation placement

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#25,984 0 comments 3 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

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

Research direction

No source files or tests are named. Start by tracing MuseScore's articulation and slur placement behavior, then compare the documented examples and prior art; done would require agreed automatic placement rules for accents, other articulation signs, tenuto, staccato, and Schoenberg stress symbols.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

feature request
Your idea
  1. Allow automatic adjustment of accents to the slurs in order to avoid large differences in the level of positioning.
    First of all, this applies to those cases when, in combination with a slur, accents can "jump" one after another or are too far from the note. For example:
    Снимок экрана (781)
    The same applies to signs such as "+" (closed), "o" (open), harmonics, etc. Example:
    Снимок экрана (785)
  2. As you know, the accent marcato and staccatissimo should usually be placed outside the staff. I suggest making some exceptions and allowing automatic approximation of such articulations to the notes for the greatest legibility. Example:
    Снимок экрана (782)
  3. As you know, such articulations as tenuto and staccato are not placed between the ledger lines. Instead, they are placed between the first and second lines of the staff. However, for tenuto, this value should be even greater so that the eye does not visually confuse them with ledger lines:
    Снимок экрана (784)
    In Dorico, by the way, this practice is set by default.
  4. Stress symbols introduced by Schoenberg. As you know, these symbols should be placed above the staff, except in double-stemmed writing, and outside any articulation marks. But for unknown reasons, MuseScore Studio currently places them under the staff, which is incorrect.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/883dc130-946b-48a7-bffe-6ee91d8ad5d4

Problem to be solved

Although accents should be placed outside the staff, in some cases it would still be wiser to make exceptions. At the moment, the user has the opportunity to adjust such things manually, but this takes time and is a workaround, as well as has side effects.

For example, take a look at this:
Снимок экрана (786)
It looks decent, but only after manual adjustments.
And here's exactly how MuseScore Studio handles it:
Slur-accents
By the way, it could also be done like this:
Снимок экрана (788)

Prior art

Dorico has a setting that allows you to place accents inside the slurs:
Снимок экрана (789)

Dorico also places tenuto much further away from the ledger lines:
Снимок экрана (791)

Additional context

No response

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
Dominant language
C++
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