Copy/Cut multiple notes with Ctrl+click selection

[Lvl50Hornist]

When using the Ctrl+click selection, the copy/paste and cut/paste utility does not function the same when you select multiple individual notes if they are on a staff with chords.

Instead the command seems to do nothing. (I don't know if this is really a missing feature or a bug,) either way I would love to be able to copy or cut multiple notes out of a chord and past them into another place.

From my small amount of research, I didn't see much about this that wasn't very outdated. I could be wrong though. Thanks.

[Lvl50Hornist]

For clarity, the cutting does work, but the pasting doesn't. If it is a bug, it might just not be making it into memory correctly.

[MarcSabatella]

Copy and paste is supported only for single notes and for ranges, because no one has worked through a design for how to handle all the sort of corner cases that could happen if list selections were allows (like if you select one note in one measure on one staff plus another note in another measure on another staff, etc.

FWIW, for what it appears are trying to do, see Tools / Explode. Also see View / Selection filter. Either of these can be used to split chords like you have here into separate lines. For more info, see the Handbook, and for questions, best to ask on the official Support forum.

[Lvl50Hornist]

Why not handle it literally? I believe that is how other software handles similar issues(and other notation software handles this issue,)

if you have it copy and paste to the literal relative space just as if you were selecting multiple measures shouldn't that handle the vast majority of edge cases?

I assume the complexity is higher, yes, but the principles are the same, no?

I will look into the expanding, which would indeed work for this example but what if I want to put specific notes on specific staves and they don't align exactly?

or I want to use one chord multiple times for arrangement in multiple places.

not saying the expand feature isn't useful, just that this would also be helpful. appreciate your time either way, thank you!

[MarcSabatella]

When you think through all the possibilities in terms of what if there is already content there that overlaps some of the selected notes, it's far from trivial. Not saying there isn't a way to designed a system that people would be happy with, but its easier said than done. Feel free to create a design proposal, though! I'm not really sure what you mean "specific notes on specific staves and they don't align exactly", but that sounds like the sort fo complex case that your design proposal would need to handle. The selection filter can do some of that sort of thing already, specifically because it does work as a range that happens to have some notes excluded, so be sure to study how that wolrks when putting your proposal together.

Pasting one chord into many places is certainly easy enough already, though - again, precisely becasue the existing range copy functionality covers that.

[Lvl50Hornist]

For sure. My proposed solution would be to handle it essentially as simply as the stave selection does(and similarly as other notation software does): you replace the target, just as you would if you were in a text editor.

there are a few edge cases that crop up if the selection includes something that would create a staff, (i.e. the selection is differently shaped in a way than the pasted location that it would add something in a staff that doesn't currently exist,) but that also is simple, you create a staff, which I believe is already a function of the staff selection pasting (I could be wrong, I used sibelius for a long time before switch, apologies.)

What do design proposals generally look like for y'all? I'd be happy to write one up when I have a minute.

[MarcSabatella]

Text editors are entirely different than music. After all, you would never need to paste text that partially replaces a single letter becausre that's the time position that letter occupies, etc. I think you really do need to spend more time thinking this through with actual real world use cases. But feel free to use Sibellius as you example as you construct these cases to see how it handles them and include your analysis of that in your proposal.

There is no specific format for design proposals, but again, I would strongly encourage you to give it serious thought and really think these things through. Otherwise, creating the proposal won't be worth the time it takes to write. Merely brushing off the complexities by claiming it's "simple" and should work "just as you would if you were in a text editor" is a good indication you haven't actually given the matter the thought that would be needed to solve the problem well

Also, to be clear - I have no say whatsoever in any of this. I'm just one of many volunteers who have contributed to the development over the years and do have some good insight into how copy and paste works and what some of the complications are. Again, it's not unsolvable, but there is more to it than meets the eye.

[Lvl50Hornist]

What I mean with text editor isn't that it's an exact indication, just that whenever you have text selected to past into an occupying space, regardless of what space that is, it replaces that text. I have thought it through, in fact because of that very case.

that simplifies things a lot because you can remove a lot of the edge cases by treating it similarly.

i.e. if a pasted note would occupy the same space as an existing note, then replace it, the same as a text editor.

if you created a macro some how to simultaneously copy and paste single letters in multiple single positions across a document and paste them into various positions, there wouldn't be an issue. The editor would handle it one of two ways: If you had selected something on top of another letter it would replace it, if you had selected empty space it would insert it.

the comparison isn't nearly as off as it seems, just that we have a more regimented structure to paste into and copy out of, and I'm not privy to exactly how that works internally, so I can't possibly know how complex or simple that is.

What I do know is that industry competitors in notation software and DAWs and also image, sound, video and text copy/paste functions all have similar functionality

Idk how this comes across as not well thought out tbh, no offense. xD

[MarcSabatella]

Again, image, sound, video, and text are inherently different from music notation in ways that become readily apparently the moment you try to design things. It's fine to refer to those things in an effort to build a mental model of overall expected behavior - and then you get to work through actual examples with actual notated music to see how the realities of the time-based nature of music affects things.

Consider the very case I mentioned: the fact that a text editor never has to conisder partially replacing a single letter. If I copy a word and paste it to given location in text, it's always understood that the boundaries are letter, that I'm not pasting something that will cover up the left "hump" of a letter "m" but not the right. It's always either before or after that letter. Not so with music. If I paste a note onto beat 2 of a measure, and there is currently a half note on beat one, you have to make a choice as to what to do. There are multiple possible ways of handling that, and same for a dozen other cases that can come up, and you need to work through whcih chocie you will make in which case and then check out some real world examples to see how well the chocies you made in theory match your expectiations for that particular real world case.

And actually, discontiguous selections are not a thing at all in most text editing programs, and even when I've seen it, the treatment of the gaps would generally be entirely different, because text doesn't have the concept of time to dictate how the gaps should be preserved so that particular model doesn't even work so well here. The fact that you keep referring to text editing as a basis here without reference to any of this is what I mean about the need to really think this stuff through.

Anyhow, iut's up to you, I've explained about as clearly as I can the sorts of things you'd need to think through. Once you have a nice collection of actual notated examples and show what decisions you'd want the algorithm to make in all the sorts of cases that would come up, I'd be interested to see the proposal, but again - I'm not the one making any sorts of decisions here. Just trying to advise you on how you could best actually make a difference and bring a feature like this closer to fruition, should that be something you are still interested in seeing happen.

[Lvl50Hornist]

"Consider the very case I mentioned: the fact that a text editor never has to conisder partially replacing a single letter. If I copy a word and paste it to given location in text, it's always understood that the boundaries are letter, that I'm not pasting something that will cover up the left "hump" of a letter "m" but not the right. It's always either before or after that letter. Not so with music. If I paste a note onto beat 2 of a measure, and there is currently a half note on beat one, you have to make a choice as to what to do. There are multiple possible ways of handling that, and same for a dozen other cases that can come up, and you need to work through whcih chocie you will make in which case and then check out some real world examples to see how well the chocies you made in theory match your expectiations for that particular real world case."

the program already handles this completely with copy pasting, so why would I need to detail how it is handled further here?

for example if you try and past a half note at the end of a bar where it won't fit, the program already needs to have a solve for that, and does.

this is just an extension of that to include another form of pasting additional notes. the temporal adjustments would not need to be changed in any way from how they are already implemented.

and to add further to your first point, I am not just pointing to text, sound, image, and video, but also to a 1-to-1 comparison with another notation software that has this exact function already implemented.

Honestly, I legit think the context and information I've provided is very likely enough for a dev to implement it, based on what else I've seen be implemented here, but I appreciate your time, thanks so much. :)

[MarcSabatella]

This isn't the place for official feature requests.

I've already explained what is lacking here to be seriously considered as a design proposal - the sorts of questions you'd need to answer, decisions the algorithm would need to make, examples you'd need to work through, etc. I understand if you don't have the time or expertise to work through all that, but anyhow, since you won't be producing an actual design, then I'd say that leaving this as a discussion here instead of making an actual formal feature request makes the most sense.

But rest assured, there are others who do want to see this enough to be working on an actual design. So one way or another it will likely happen at some point - it just may or may not work the exact way you have in mind.

[Lvl50Hornist]

Where is the place to request features? I was told in no uncertain terms that this was it on the forum. xD

Sorry, I'm genuinely trying to understand. I'm not trying to be obtuse.

It iant that I am not interested in helping, just that the amount of time it would take me to create a design is so much higher than someone who is already intimately familiar with how the program operates/is part of the development team.

to be completely honest, I am just a user requesting a feature. I wish I had the the kind of time and effort available to get involved in that way, but I have my own stuff to work on. I use this for my job and I need it to do a job.

the reason I even request this feature is because it would save me time in said work, and again, there is precedent in other notation software for it.

We are talking about an amount of work for me to make a design for this that could take hours or days, whereas someone familiar with the systems in place it could take orders of magnitude less.

[Lvl50Hornist]

I see now. you open an issue with feature request. my bad. thanks for your help, appreciate your time. apologies if I came off as brusque or worse!