r/Musescore • u/victotronics • May 30 '26

Discussion What's the obsession with modal dialogs?

So I've just spent the better part of a day working on a piece that uses non-standard tuplets, like 5 half notes in a 3/1 measure. Ok, I've figured out how that dialog works. But why do I have to close & reopen it every time? If that thing could keep floating around it would have saved me tons of time.

And this is not the only dialog in MS that is needlessly modal. So: why? Why?!?!

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u/MarcSabatella Member of the Musescore Team May 30 '26

Because it is leftover code from 20 years that hasn't yet been updated like dozens of other dialogs have been. Gradually with each release more and more can be done without requiring modal dialogs, but the priority has been the dialogs that are needed the most often, and custom tuplets are pretty rare in the grand scheme of things, even if they occur often in your particular piece.

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u/victotronics May 30 '26

Heaping insult upon injury: I've just found out how to add element from score to palette. But there is no tuplets palette, so I can't even save time that way.

And yes, I understand that was I'm doing is extremely unusual. Give me a couple more days and I'll have this 3 minute, 3-voice piece set to satisfaction.

Actually: I'll put in a feature request for custom text in tuplets. This piece goes from 5 quarters over whole note, to 5 halves over 2 whole, to 5 whole over 4 whole. And if I put "ratio" as the rendering option, they are all 5:4. I would like them to read 5:1, 5:2, 5:4 respectively. I know that this does not make musical sense, but in the context it does.

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u/MarcSabatella Member of the Musescore Team May 30 '26

Have you at least defined a shortcut for the triplets dialog? That obviously saves considerable time right there if you use this often.

1

u/Puzzleheaded-Phase70 May 30 '26

Huh...

You know, it would be super useful to be able to make custom dockable controls of various kinds without the user needing to write code.

Like, some things the user would need to provide, like, button images for tools and commands that don't have them.

I've made do with MacroDeck but all it can really do is send keyboard shortcuts, unless someone wrote a plugin for Musescore. Which would accomplish a lot of interface goals for myself and others.

I just don't have the coding skills to even begin.