GSoC 2022 with MuseScore - Harp Pedalling Diagrams

https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/12269

This post will sum up all of the additions and changes I have made to MuseScore for 2022’s Google Summer of Code harp pedalling project. The previous blog posts with weekly updates can be found here.

As the team are working towards the release of MuseScore 4.0, this code will only be merged after its release and be included in a 4.x update.

Screenshot showing harp pedalling UI and diagrams in a score with proofreading showing unplayable notes in red Ex 1: Screenshot showing harp pedalling UI and diagrams in a score with proofreading showing unplayable notes in red

Code changes

PR #12269 contains feedback for changes made to the engraving and palette modules but was abandoned in favour of only maintaining one PR. PR #12597 will be merged eventually. This contains the changes in #12269 as well as changes in the notation module to implement the UI. A summary of the changes are below:

Pull Request #12597 Harp pedalling diagrams and UI

  • 2022-09-09 dd05785 Created base class for harp pedal diagram
  • 2022-09-09 97eee81 Add palette for harp notation
  • 2022-09-09 3a591ba Created pedal settings element with diagram and text variations. Changes made for undo, text styles, score interaction.
  • 2022-09-09 42d3960 Element popups viewable in the score
  • 2022-09-09 746482d Created pedalling UI. This includes necessary changes to HarpPedalDiagram class and integration with the undo stack
  • 2022-09-09 b9c9d9a Added proofreading via notehead colours
  • 2022-09-09 ea6326d Create utests and vtest

Evaluation

The project has met the goals I outlined in my project proposal - diagrams can be added to the score and edited with a new UI, and immediate automatic proofreading is provided. This is a much better integrated and user friendly experience compared to previous versions, where this had to be done through a plugin.

Future work

The code will not be included until after the release of 4.0, so I will have to maintain the PR until then to ensure it remains mergeable. When it is merged and more people see and use the feature, more bugs may appear so I will stay on hand to help fix those. I’d like to add glissando playback which will need to be done after some structural work is done on the playback system. This is connected to another product, Muse Sounds which is being developed in house and is unreleased. After release, changes can be made to the glissando playback system with a lower likelihood of having to repeat this work in the future.