Am 19.01.26 um 10:33 schrieb Richard Shann:
On Sat, 2026-01-17 at 20:14 +0100, Andreas Schneider wrote:
Am 17.01.26 um 18:00 schrieb Richard Shann:
On Sat, 2026-01-17 at 16:13 +0000, berenbeor wrote:
[...]
[As you probably know, most of the other programs (Musescore,
Dorico,
L...]MMS etc) prioritize measure time rules over notes, which is
really
hard to comprehend. If I try to add a missing note, it often
deletes
a correct note. I can't understand why time rules take precedence
over notes. Someone could make a bunch of money by creating a
simple
program that allowed a user to turn off 'time rules' for a
measure or
the score, insert whatever note/duration desired, and then go
back
and fix the timing (perhaps with a simple toggle that shows the
measures needing fixing turning red). The idea of forcing random
notes and rests into a measure for a time rule is simply not how
people think.
Yes, changing your input while you are putting it in as if at each
step
you have a complete finished score is annoying - I remember
thinking
that when I gave musescore a go some years back. Denemo sort of
does
the opposite: although it displays barlines to break the input into
chunks for the convenience of the display they are not necessarily
where the barlines will be, LilyPond determines that (unless you
override it). Instead Denemo just colors under and overfull bars
blue
and red.
Thinking along these lines, currently there are Denemo measures that
divide the score into chunks and finally Lilypond measures (barlines)
in
the typeset score. The Denemo measures seem quite artificial to me,
as
they do not influence the final output. I know they can be adjusted
with
Measures > Split Measure at Cursor and Measures > Merge with Next
Measure, which I use quite often. Nevertheless, it would be much more
intuitive for the user if Denemo measures would always adjust
themselves
automatically while editing, just as Lilypond measures do.
So, I did some peering at the code and created a patch that draws the
Lilypond bar lines (to some extent) which I attach here. However, this
is not very useful I think. Re-organizing the bars of the whole
movement every time a note is inserted/deleted would be very confusing
- e.g. you are looking at a bar that you are changing the rhythm of and
in the course of doing that you have for a moment a partially filled
bar; suddenly the subsequent bars are all messed up with notes moving
into bars that don't own them. The time taken to scan ahead through the
rest of the movement calculating the new positions of all the
subsequent notes and adjusting the contents of each subsequent measure
would cause the note editing to hiccup and jerk even on modern
processors.
Thank you for the patch. I have applied it and have done some tests, but
haven't found out what the changes in behaviour are. What is it that it
shall accomplish?
A bar adjustment feature should not be computationally expensive.
Already back in the 90's, the notation software Capella was working like
this very fluently under Windows 3.1 on a 386 PC. If you are interested
how note entering works in Capella, you can try out their demo version,
see
https://www.capella-software.com/us/index.cfm/products/capella/info-capella/
(it used to work under wine several years back). Essentially, barlines
are only drawn after a measure is filled up. If a measure is overfull,
the barline is drawn red. Notes are never split when a bar becomes
overfull. An overfull measure is compensated by a subsequent underfull
measure, very similar to Lilypond. Barlines are adjusted while entering
notes. I find this behaviour much more intuitive than Denemo's.
Moreover, reflecting Lilypond's behaviour (that is very similar to the
one of Capella) while editing would be more in line with being a
Lilypond front end.
Especially
when arranging or transcribing by ear, that would save quite some
extra
work fiddling with the artificial Denemo measures. What do you think
about refactoring the Denemo measures to automatically adjust
themselves?
There is an answer here though. The command
Location: Object Menu ▶ Movements
Label: Adjust the Measure Lengths
Name: ReBar
Tooltip: Removes gaps in duration of measures, redistributes the notes
according to the time signature.
contains the code you want to use. As it stands it is interactive,
asking whether you want to adjust the whole movement or the subsequent
bars etc. But it could be cut down so that it just adjusts the measures
from the cursor and then it could be given a shortcut or even invoked
every few milliseconds if the score was modified... This way you could
control the effect.
I do know that command, but it does not do what I want. The command
always asks to split notes when a bar is overfull for the time being,
and I can't continue without splitting the note. However, splitting is
never what I want. What I want is what Lilypond does, i.e. overfull
measures are compensated in the next measure. For example, if bar 1 has
a quarter to much, then bar 2 shall have a quarter less to compensate
for it.
Andreas
