Enhanced control of chord symbol elements

Your idea

I would like to have global control of the size and placement of individual chord symbol elements — specifically: ∆, +, °, and Ø.

Problem to be solved

While MS allows for limited control of Extensions and Modifiers, the controllable elements are identified generically. Here are some examples of what I believe to be the most elegant placement of certain elements. Obviously others may have other preferences. What I would like to see is a way for all of us to sculpt our chord symbols as we see fit.

• The ° and Ø elements are too small. I would like to be able to make them larger without also enlarging other elements.
• ∆ should be a superscript, referring as it does to the 7th, not to the triad — which is major by default. Also, currently it's too large.
• m∆ should be written with the ∆ directly above the m.
• Extensions beyond the initial one ("7" or "9"...) when not preceded by accidental, are only available without parentheses by use of what I can only guess is an undocumented feature or a bug — that is, by using opening parentheses but not closing them. I consider this to be an essential feature, documented or not. Please don't find it and eliminate it! Or, better yet, document it and make it official.

Prior art

Having come up creating charts by hand (yeah, back in the 70s...), over the years I standardized my chord symbology toward what I believed to be the most concise, readable, and elegant placement of elements. In order to duplicate those standards in Finale, I created my own chord library, using its customization function. That took dozens of hours, but I was able to place elements exactly as I wanted them. MS is, of course, much smarter:

Chord Builder.pdf

A few additional control points is all we need!

Additional context

For those of us who work principally with lead sheets and lead-sheet-type arrangements for jazz and related genres, the "look" of chord symbols is an important part of our engraving signature, as it were. I, for what it's worth, use the Standard preset, with tweaking of font, scaling, and offset preferences.

Also and finally: It sure would be nice to be able to Tab through the fields in the Chord symbols dialog box, instead of having to mouse into each one. And it would be super-nice to be able to Enter out of the dialog.

Checklist

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