change size of musical symbols

[aha917]

I recently wanted to change the sizes of the up and down bow articulations for a violin staff. It turned out this isnt possible.
Also moving the articulation slightly left or right, didnt work either.

Has anyone else had the same problem, have you solved it, and generally, wouldn't it make sense to add this feature to the MS backlog?

[MarcSabatella]

The sizes of the various symbols are set by the font, so the usual way to obtain different sizes would to try different fonts. But an explicit override would be nice indeed.

To can certainly move articulations, though. Either drag, or use the Appearance controls in the Properties panel, or press F2 to put it into edit mode then use the cursor keys.

[MarcSabatella]

I don't understand what you mean. The accuracy is identical for keyboard movement of text versus articulations, and not at all like mouse movement which indeed is completely imprecise. Maybe you mean the granularity of the motion - how far an element is moved? For text, it is hard coded to be 0.1 sp for arrow keys alone, or 1 sp when using Ctrl. For all other elements, the granularity when not using Ctrl is controlled by your grid settings in the Appearance section of the Properties panel.

[aha917]

Yes, sorry for not explaining in detail. Indeed what I am referring to is the "granularity of the motion". So when moving text it's much more precise [as you write 0.1 sp].

Bringing it back to my case: is it possible to move the up/down bow articulations with the same granularity [0.1]?

When I move the articulations [select the articulation > F2 > left/right OR Crtl+left/right] the movement steps are still not as accurate as when moving text.

[MarcSabatella]

Yes, as I said, the grid configuration in Properties / Appearance allows you to control the granularity. Although there is a bug where this setting is not always applied correctly (see comments in #13438), and a pending PR to fix this (#28965).

[aha917]

I didn't find the grid fine-tuning at first - works now. Yes, configuring the grid

works well. Thanks Marc!

Last question: since resizing of a standard articulation cannot be done, is there a way to convert a symbol [from Master Palette >Symbols] into an articulation? Down/Up Bow > Symbol of Down/Up bow, so that I could resize them all together?

[MarcSabatella]

No, elements cannot be converted from one type to another. It is conceivable someone could write a plugin to do this, though.

[ghost]

If you add the symbols from Master palette -> Symbols (not from Articulations), you can scale it (and rotate it) in Properties.

[aha917]

thanks, but adding these one by one, is a very sub-optimal procedure.
Ideally, I want to be able to select all articulations [right click on the element > Select > more.. > select Same sub type ] and do the resize for, for example. Then shift it around if it looks a bit "note-off"

[MarcSabatella]

As mentioned, if it's just the bow markings you feel are smalelr than you prefer in the font you are using, you could simply choose another font that might have these larger. There is also Format / Style / Articulations & ornaments, which allows you to icnrease the size of all articulations. But yes, the ability to do so on an individual articulation basis would be nice.