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Topic: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82 (Read 6306 times) previous topic - next topic

Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

In the User Tips section, item 82 describes a method, using layering and hidden notes and rests, to get the effect of beaming notes with intervening rests.  I, for one, have used this in a number of places.  However, with the recent updates to 1.75 the rules for displaying beamed notes which are marked as never visible have changed, and the method described (and used by me in a number of places) no longer works, while not work-around has been proposed.

I thought that there had been a discussion of this in the forum recently, but I have been unable to locate it.  In the meanwhile would in not be a good idea to remove the User Tip?  It would also be nice if some simple way of locating and fixing (if there is any fix) the instances of these were provided.  There is the problem of examining several hundred files to see if any contain examples, a somewhat daunting prospect without some sort of help.

The current situation certainly produces ugly scores!

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #1 –
This usertip (user tip #82) is still valid as far as I know. In fact, recent 1.75 updates make it even more workable, not less, since you now do not get any artifacts in the beam from the hidden note. Why don't you think it is valid?

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #2 –
Mea Culpa.  I had opened one of my files in question, and made the (incorrect) assumption that anything that was grayed out would not be visible in the print/player display.  I had not realized that the grayed (and seemingly non visible) part of the beam would, in fact, display in printing and in the player.  I find the current state a little confusing, as to me, up until now, gray = not visible, where as now I don't know what cue to use, short of continually running to print-preview, to tell if a gray item will be visible or not.  Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Cyril

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #3 –
I think that what might be confusing is that when layering, if any overlaid items (such as barlines) in the "stack" are invisible, they are shown as grey if none of the layered staves are active. However, when a staff is made active, all visible items on that staff show up in the visible colour.

I suppose one could wish for yet another colour, indicating the "at least one invisible" status in a stack of similar items.

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #4 –
Fred, I don't think you are correct, at least if I understand what you are saying.  For example, have two staves, with layering allowed.

On the first put three eighth notes, mark the middle one never-visible, and beam them.  On the second enter three eighth rests, making the first and third never-visible.  Then layer to first staff over the second.  When I do this the middle eighth note is gray (correct) and the left half of the beam is also gray (incorrect, to my way of thinking), no matter which staff is currently selected.  This is true even when you play the notes.

Am I missing something?  Given my propensity to jump to conclusions it is possible, but I don't thinks in this case.

Cyril

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #5 –
Well, this seems to be one of those WFM (works for me) cases. Following your example, I see the visible notes and their stems in blue, along with the full beam. The hidden middle note and its stem are grey (correct also).

The phenomenon I was referring to is different. Let's say you have a treble clef on each of the staves; on the top staff visiblity is set to "always" and on the lower staff it's set to "never". Now if you select the top staff it shows blue (correct), if you select the lower staff it shows grey (also correct). But if you select a different staff, it also shows grey because it's ambiguous.

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #6 –
Fred,

Yes, I know that phenomonon.  As to what I see, here are snippets of screen-shots.

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~calberga/Beamoverrest.htm

Why I should see thing differently than you, though, is beyond me.  I don't THINK I have anything set strangely.  What you see was built and recorded in a freshly started instance of NWC.

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #7 –
Hm.. no, that's certainly not what I see. The only other difference is that I'm still on Web Update 6. (Goes off to install update 7...)

Ha! Solved it! Web Update 7 causes the bug. It was fine in 6 (as I reported) but confirm that it behaves as Cyril describes in update 7.

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #8 –
This is not a bug. If the editor did not show the beam segment for the hidden note, then you would not be able to tell its duration by looking. In the editor, the hidden segment is shown, so you can tell the note's duration. When printing, the note and its beam segment are ignored (just as is indicated by the hidden color in which it is shown while in the editor).

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #9 –
The reason this was changed was essentially to make the hidden note truly hidden from the printout. Before this change, a hidden 16th note in an 8th beam would leave a 16th note artifact in the beam, even though it was hidden.

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #10 –
I'm just trying to get my head around this.  In some sense the beam has three parts, each associated with one of the notes.  The parts for the first two notes, one hidden, one not, happen to coexist in the image space.  One of these is made gray, to show that it is part of a hidden note, while the other, that which is part of the non-hidden note, is "under" the hidden bar, and so the gray trumps the dark color it should be (black or blue, depending on activity).

...

just back from NWC, and yes, that has to be the logic, since if it is the first note which is hidden the entire beam shows.  What was not obvious to me was that there were TWO beams, one superimposed on the other.

Sorry to be so dense.

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #11 –
Thanks for that explanation, Eric. Makes sense, of course. In the more trivial case of all-equal durations it does look abnormal, and since it did not do this in the previous build I took it to be a newly-introduced bug.

This sort of thing makes it all the more apparent how challenging it must be to write a music notation program. Glad it's not up to me!

Re: Change in displaying non-visable beamed notes: kills user tip 82

Reply #12 –
There does seem to be a problem with this system, however. Notice that when a dotted eighth note is beamed to a sixteenth with the sixteenth hidden, the dotted eighth looks like a dotted quarter note in print preview.

I know beamed sixteenth notes usually are not hidden, but this could indicate a larger difficulty with the current system of beaming hidden notes. In theory, the flag should be put back on the note in these cases. Practically, I have never run across this problem and probably never will.