Positioning Musical Symbols

This screen is accessed from Tools->Symbol Positioning... from the Main Menu.

Symbol Positioning screen.

This screen is used to adjust the vertical position of CelticPipes musical symbols relative to the note(s) to which they refer.

Automatic positioning

By default, the Automatic checkbox will have a tick in it and all the other fields will be disabled. This means that the symbol positioning scheme used before CelticPipes version 2 will be followed automatically. If this item is not selected, the current settings displayed on the screen will be used, i.e. 'manual' positioning is in force.

This will be the default setting for all new or pre-V2 scores.

Manual positioning

All of the musical symbols are listed on this screen, either by name e.g. 'Crescendo' or as part of a group e.g. Tenor flourish.

The idea is to set the position of an item above or below the selected reference point by a certain amount.

The various reference points are can be found in the list boxes in the Relative To column. The possible references are:

Staff Top
Staff Middle
Staff Bottom
Note Head
Note Tail

(NB: Not all choices will always be available for every item being positioned. Inapproprtiate items will note appear in the list).

A value can be set in the Offset field to position the item relative to the chosen reference. Here are some useful things to know about the Offset:

    - The values being entered are actually millimetres (there are 25.4 mm per inch).
    - Fractional values may be entered such as 5.6.
    - For Staff (top/middle/bottom) positioning, a positive value is upwards, a negative value is downwards.
    - For Note positioning, a positive value is the separation away from the note head or stem, a negative value is towards the note head or stem.
    - If the item being positioned is being aligned to a note but it spans a number of notes/bars e.g. crescendo, then it aligns with first note in the first bar.

The Staff Top and Staff Bottom refer to the position half way between the line of music above and the line below.

Tip: The Staff outline can be seen more clearly if you temporarily press the Annotation button on the main toolbar. This will highlight the borders of the Staff between lines and measures on the music page with a green 'grid'. Remember to turn this off after you are done!

Save as Defaults

When a new score is created and Automatic is turned off, you may want to see different default manual positions to be used as a starting point. If you do, then set the items on the screen as you would wish to see them and then press the Save As Defaults button Then every time you create a new score the values you have just set (and saved) will be used as the default settings.