[MU4 Issue] Cannot select multiple measures

[HemantAntony]

Describe the bug
Its pretty straight forward to select a measure. However, when you try to select another measure, the range selection turns to list selection

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Open a score
2. Click on a measure
3. Ctrl + Click on another measure
4. The range selection on the first measure turns to a list selection

Expected behavior
Both measures should be selected

Screenshots

issue.mp4

Platform information

• OS: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

[MarcSabatella]

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, this is correct - Shift, not Ctrl to create ranges selections. Ctrl is specifically for list selections.

[HemantAntony]

I think I might have worded it incorrectly. But, I meant as in selecting only, say Measure 4 and Measure 10. So you would have to use Ctrl + Select which is currently not possible

[cbjeukendrup]

That is indeed not possible, but are there any use cases for such a "non-contiguous range selection"?

[MarcSabatella]

There could be, like to transpose a given passage in multiple places. Or, for that matter, to select discontinuous staves for the purpose of soloing playback. But anyhow, discontinuous range selects are not something we've ever supported.

FWIW, up until pretty recently, Ctrl+clicking an element with a range already selected would simply clear the selection. It was by popular request that we changed this to actually first convert the range to a list, then interpret the Ctrl+click normally - either adding or removing the element to/from the selection. So you can easily have selection that includes everything in a measure except a given element, or everything in one measure plus a single element in another. Not sure I've ever had a use case for that, but it was harmless enough to add - clearing the selection was never useful either and you can do that yourself with Esc - and it solved some problem or other.

[eakwarren]

This may be similar to my discussion about discreetly selecting staves for playback. I've provided more detail in the discussion, but @MarcSabatella help me understand your use of the word 'discontinuous.' I think what you mean is a horizontal selection. Is that correct? What about a vertical selection? That's what I'm envisioning.

Both use cases seem compelling. The former for quickly auditioning bar 5 jumping to bar 7 to see if the combination of notes works better compositionally, the latter for balancing instruments that aren't next to each other in the score. Flutes with violins for example, or clarinets, horns and celli.

[MarcSabatella]

A range selection is currently defined as a rectangle, with a start & end segment (the horizontal dimension) plus a start and end staff (the vertical dimension). It includes everything in that range, and those four data points are literally all we use internally to represent a range selection. And commands to extend a range selection horizontally or vertically (eg, Shift+up.dow/left/right) or to draw a rectangle are the only common/standard user interfaces that exist for defining range selections.

By discontinuous (or discontinuous - more or less synonymous here), I meant anything that goes beyond that - a selection that isn't just a rectangle defined by horizontal & vertical start/end. Someone would need to invent a way to create these sorts of selections - making sure it's both discoverable and keyboard accessible (ideally also touch-friendly) - and also implement the necessary changes to the internal representation of selections. The implementation is probably the easy part - a good design for discontinuous range selections is probably quite tricky.

[eakwarren]

I appreciate the detailed explanation. Thanks!