[ghmerrill]

I'm not sure this is a feature request.  I don't mean it to be a bug report.  But I'm puzzled by this behavior.

If you select Half Page display mode and then "Show half page turn position on all pages," you get a "slider" displayed as a kind of half-page separator.  The slider has two different transparencies, depending on whether the next turn will replace the top half-page or the bottom half-page.  Let's call the more opaque version the "dark slider" and the more transparent one the "light slider".

Somewhat oddly, the light slider appears to have a fully transparent background and/or live in a layer below the staff/notation/etc. of the piece.  This is nice.  It's not in the way, but visible.  But turn the page and the dark slider appears to have a solid white (rectangular) background and to live on top of notation on the page -- I.e., it obscures the notation.  This is kind of a bummer because I'm finding that often it makes the last line displayed in the half page to be obscured to the point where it's unintelligible and unplayable.  You basically lose an entire line of display there.

I don't know what the entire set of design goals are in this context, but can't both sliders have the same degree of transparency, or be placed in the same layer, so that material on the page isn't obscured by one of them?

[Zubersoft]

The reason that the slider in the second case has a small solid background is to create separation between the two halves. I tested it with no background, and it was visually unpleasant to have the two halves run directly into each other. While the presence of the slider is an indicator that a half page turn has occurred, there was something unnerving at not being able to completely tell where one half ended and the other began without a small amount of separation. I can consider reducing the height of the background a little if more users indicate that they don't like this.

Mike

[ghmerrill]

That makes sense.  My initial reaction would be "If it looks okay in the one case, why doesn't it look okay in the other?", but I can imagine it may be confusing.    I don't think there's any point to reducing the height of the background since in a lot of cases critical chunks of that line will still be obscured.  But of course, in a lot of cases, only an upper portion of that line may appear anyway. And if retaining distinct separation of the two halves with some degree of "spacing" or "interruption" yields the best effect, then you probably can't do better.  It seems likely that there's always some display issue you're going to run into at that border. I've tried to think of alternatives but the only one that I think might (I emphasize "might") work would be a processor intensive AI approach that would lay out both "halves" of the page dynamically and provide for unobstructive separation.  Not an approach worth pursuing. 

[BRX]

Can't you adjust both separation lines to where you want the separation occur so it doesn't obscure the notes anyway?
Personally I always adjust it to a white areay so that the sepration hast a complete uncut and unobscured staff line.

Or have I misunderstood something here?

[ghmerrill]

I must have missed that possibility.  I'm still not sure that this approach -- or any -- completely avoids the general problem of partial displays of staff lines. But I'll take a look and try it.  How do you do that yourself?

[Zubersoft]

Just press on the line and you can drag it up or down (if you are asking how to move the half page turn position). If you are asking how to avoid partial displays of staff lines, that depends on whether there is enough white space on the page where you can place the half page turn position without it cutting something off. If there is not, then you are correct that there may not be a way to prevent that, but you could just put the half page position lower on the page and turn the page ahead of time.

Mike

[ghmerrill]

Just press on the line and you can drag it up or down (if you are asking how to move the half page turn position). If you are asking how to avoid partial displays of staff lines, that depends on whether there is enough white space on the page where you can place the half page turn position without it cutting something off. If there is not, then you are correct that there may not be a way to prevent that, but you could just put the half page position lower on the page and turn the page ahead of time.

Mike

Ah, okay.  I experimented with this only a little.  My fault that I missed that such a movement could be page-specific.  That works brilliantly and is easy to do.