musescore / musescore/MuseScore

Use SMuFL glyph for grace note slash

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#33,970 4 comments 3 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@davidstephengrant is already working on this.

Since Jun 26, 2026.

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Description

Your idea

Currently, MuseScore draws grace note slashes as line segments instead of using the glyph ("Slash for stem up grace note") which exists in the SMuFL specification. Using the proper glyph instead could improve engraving quality.

Problem to be solved

The line that MuseScore currently draws for grace notes looks different than the glyph which is included in Bravura.

Image

Manually repositioning and scaling the glyph over a grace note without a slash gives a result like this:

Image

Compared to the current output, which IMO looks worse:

Image
Prior art

No response

Additional context

Suggested by @Jojo-Schmitz and others on Discord: https://discord.com/channels/818804595450445834/818848561047273544/1519089119878316153

It seems the reason MuseScore does not use the glyph could be due to the fact that the glyph doesn't exist in any of the MuseScore fonts (only Bravura). However, fallbacks to Bravura for missing elements are used in some other cases, and furthermore, MuseScore could add the glyph to its own fonts (MuseJazz, Gonville, Emmentaler and Leland). See also https://github.com/rism-digital/verovio/issues/1922

Checklist
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