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Topic: Percussion Staff Bar Lines (Read 4025 times) previous topic - next topic

Percussion Staff Bar Lines

I'm trying to create a percussion staff with a single staff line. Is there any way to increase the length of the bar lines on that staff?

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #1 –
I can think of a couple of tricks...

RickG used to use headless, muted grace notes to create vertical lines with their stems.  You would need to make the real barlines invisible because I don't think you could successfully exactly overlay the stem on the real barline.

OR,
you could try placing a text vertical line positioned centre justified at next note/bar.  The <|> (<Shift+\>) character springs to mind.  There are also line drawing characters in some fonts accessible through Character Map but they might be a bit bold/thick.

There may also be an object available that could be co-opted for this role, but that information would have to come from the creator or a user experienced with the putative object.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #2 –
I thought of some of those tricks, but, unfortunately, the staff contains decorated bar lines. Not easy to simulate. It's too bad you can't have a 5 line staff with lines 1,2,4 and 5 invisible.

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #3 –
Years ago when I was fiddling with fonts I experimented with creating a font that was just barlines.  It was based around my SwingDings suite and the intention was to use a user tool to overlay the NWC generated barlines with text objects that were lines (actually characters) from the font.

The idea was to try to imitate a handwritten appearance for barlines.  The associated VBScript I wrote was supposed to randomly select from some barline sets within the font file.  Either 1 of 10 (IIRC) possible normal barlines or 1 of 3 (again IIRC) decorated barlines.

I never ended up completing the project because of both time constraints and limited usefulness.  However, perhaps you could use a similar approach?
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #4 –
Idea for a workaround (which may have problems of its own): Add invisible (0-line) staves above and below; and connect the bar lines from above and to the lower one. See attached example.

H.M.

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #5 –
Cool idea, much better than mine.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #6 –
Another idea. (wait for it...) A Staffsig user object that searches for all subsequent bar lines and redraws them at a specified height. Perhaps it would require them to have visibility set to None, to prevent alignment glitches,

Or better yet, a staff property setting in the next version of NWC that lets you specify the barline height for a percussion staff with a single staff line.

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #7 –
Quote from: Mike Shawaluk –
Another idea. (wait for it...) A Staffsig user object that searches for all subsequent bar lines and redraws them at a specified height. Perhaps it would require them to have visibility set to None, to prevent alignment glitches,
Maybe an associated user tool that can set the visibility to Never...  Of course that could also be achieved with Global_Mod...

Quote
Or better yet, a staff property setting in the next version of NWC that lets you specify the barline height for a percussion staff with a single staff line.
I really like this idea best - It feels well past time for the next version.  Not that I'm having any problems with what we have, but it just seems that there are possible features that could potentially revolutionise how we use NWC.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #8 –
Quote from: hmmueller –
Idea for a workaround (which may have problems of its own): Add invisible (0-line) staves above and below; and connect the bar lines from above and to the lower one. See attached example.

H.M.
Super Idea!
I noticed the upper and lower boundaries of the percussion staff should be set to 5 to achieve the correct length for the bars.
Always look on the bright side of life!

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #9 –
HM's solution is perfect. Now can anyone figure out how  to get the endings of "MM 3 staff" to look like those of "MM 1 staff"?

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #10 –
Something like this?

I deleted all objects from the 1st and 3rd staff, then set the visibilty of the endings to 'Always' and increased their vertical offset.
Always look on the bright side of life!

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #11 –
This is bizarre. My actual file had 5 lines, When I leave staff 1 and staff 3 empty, the editor and viewer show the longer bar lines for the whole file, but Print Preview only shows the first line. If I fill the first staff, 8 measures only, with bar lines and invisible half rests, with a Force System Break after the 8th measure, Print Preview still only shows one line. If I add one more rest in measure 9, two lines (only) show in Print Preview, but the bar lines for the second line have short bottoms (as attached). I need to fill the third staff to get the second line bars to descend properly. I appreciate the help, and think this looks like a bug, but I assume it will never be fixed.

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #12 –
Quote from: fathafluff –
... and think this looks like a bug, ...
Well, "not really". Noteworthy was, as far as I know, never designed to have a specific "expected" behaviour when there are staves of different lengths. You need to fill up all staves to the same length before anything is considered a bug, I'd say.

That said, the behaviour you describe can be reasonably explained:
* The topmost visible staff defines how much is shown on a print (that's why you need enough bars to spill over into the second line - either by an explicit system break, or by adding more measures).
* For "Bars Connected" to have an effect in a line, there must be a visible staff below that line to connect to (that's why you need to fill the third staff) (I just found out that it needn't be the next staff that's visible - just any staff below needs to extend to that line. But as I said, all this is "unguaranteed behaviour" in my opinion).

H.M.

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #13 –
HM: Filling all staves to equal length makes sense., and I tried that initially. I was trying Opagust's suggestion, which worked for my one line file, but not for the longer file. But, with all staves filled, I cannot get the special endings, which are rendered from the top staff, to display as I want them. (See earliest attachments.) I've tried spacers and stemless, headless grace notes in the top staff, ,as well as invisible duplicates of the staff 2 items., But I cannot get the second ending to start the bracket just after the master repeat.

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #14 –
Special endings are by default only printed on the top staff. So their position in the top staff declares what is printed.
Try this: On your first staff, set 'Show on printed' in the Visibility tab to 'Never', in Percussion Staff to 'Always'.
Always look on the bright side of life!

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #15 –
Just as Opagust says. I have added your score with the necessary changes here; and a picture of what it looks like in the editor. You can see that the now visible bracket 2. at the right position already here (and more so after pressing F11 or Alt-F-V for a print preview).

Also, just as a comment, you can shift up (or down) the special endings to place them at a nicer height (shifting is done as always by highlighting with Shift-left/right; and then moving with Ctrl-Shift-up/down).

(In the score, I also added an invisible 1/4 time signature on the upper zero-line staff for consistency; and replaced the superfluous [and visible!] notes with an - invisible - rest there [or did you want to achieve something with these notes?]).

H.M.

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #16 –
Wow, that was simple. The endings are normally rendered by the top staff (Visibility: Default = yes), with lower staves default = not visible, and I didn't think to try to override that. But all that was needed was to set the top staff ending visibility to Never and the second staff to Always!

Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines

Reply #17 –
Quote from: fathafluff –
Wow, that was simple. The endings are normally rendered by the top staff (Visibility: Default = yes), with lower staves default = not visible, and I didn't think to try to override that. But all that was needed was to set the top staff ending visibility to Never and the second staff to Always!

Always look at the bright side!
Always look on the bright side of life!