In an IRC chat several weeks ago, I found out that my original idea “separating notation from score files” was a bit extreme for MuseScore’s devs. Originally, I wanted to keep alternative notation completely out of the score files, but seeing as there’s nothing like that in MuseScore right now… Well, it ain’t happening any time soon.
On the bright side, there’s still a very smart, very flexible way to implement alternative notation, I am now merging notation data with the existing Stafftype class. This will allow notations to be set on a staff by staff basis. Just as important, I will still be able to save notations in their own files. Notations will now be saved and loaded as “Stafftype Templates”.
Currently, I’m working on an editor for creating, loading, editing, and saving Stafftype Templates. Once this is done, I need to make sure the notation data is passed around smoothly.
All this has been quite time consuming, and there are a lot of things to test. I haven’t been able to get a working prototype finished yet, but… If you want to see the current state of my code (which at least compiles and runs successfully), get it here: https://github.com/CraigFisher/MuseScore/tree/pre_alternative . (I’m using a new temporary branch for displaying my changes on Github until I have a version that can actually run the notations again)