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by bilboa 1036 days ago
I downvoted your comment, not because I'm a MuseScore apologist, but just because calling an extraordinarily complex piece of software like this "trash" just because it's missing an obviously-useful-but-non-critical feature, seems extremely hyperbolic.
1 comments

I consider the feature critical. Why on earth present a GUI and then tell people not to use it as a GUI? What is the purpose of letting you grab and drag things on the staff then, if this is a huge no-no?

And how is this "hyperbolic?" A quick search will show you that this is a question that is asked numerous times about MuseScore. Examples:

https://musescore.org/en/node/321194 https://musescore.org/en/node/333696

I suppose the main reason I think it's hyperbolic is because I disagree with you that this is a critical feature. First of all, I've written lots of scores with MuseScore and Sibelius and I don't remember ever missing this feature. It's possible at some point I tried to drag a note around and realized I couldn't, but if so I've forgotten because it's not remotely close to being a critical feature for writing scores, at least not with my workflow.

Second, I'd point out that Sibelius also doesn't allow dragging notes around, and now that I think of it, I haven't seen any GUI notation software that does. Either the developers of all of these apps made the same oversight and haven't realized how obviously critical and non-problematic this feature is, or, maybe the people who responded to you on MuseScore forums explaining that it actually would be a problematic feature are right.

A reasonable response. Priorities differ. But to me the point is to provide a GUI-based means to edit a score. I'm doing bog-simple, single-note-at-a-time transcriptions of trumpet parts by ear... and finding it to be cumbersome as hell. That strikes me as a poor experience.

Reportedly, Finale lets you drag notes around. Can't speak for the others.

Regardless of how important anyone thinks this feature is, I could accept the limitation more easily if the application didn't pretend to let you do it and then refuse. To do so wastes the user's time, which should be stringently avoided.

I just installed version 4.1 and it seems a little better than I remember, so I will give it another look.

"Critical", in my book, means "required in order to accomplish the purported goal of the software". With this definition, your desired feature is in no way essential. It may be annoying or aggravating to you that this feature does not exist (in a similar way that Ctrl+C not working in Emacs is annoying and aggravating to a Windows user), but one can write and edit full orchestral scores with what MuseScore offers out of the box.
Depends on what you think the goal is, I guess.