Selecting a single (i.e. unbeamed) downwards stem in engrave mode and pressing Alt-Arrowkey up or down to lengthen/shorten the stem, arrow up will move the stem endpoint downwards instead of upwards and vice versa.
Although it’s different to other items moving graphically in Engrave mode, it is expected behaviour - in the context of stems, they’re either lengthening or shortening the stem by moving the end away or closer to the notehead. Alt-Up lengthens all stems, whether they’re up-stem or down-stem.
Thank you for your response! It does seem unintuitive at first because of the inconsistency to other movements, but your explanation makes sense. I was just wondering because for beamed stems, Alt-Up for example actually does move the stem endpoint upwards regardless of whether its an up-stem or a down-stem… why is this different from unbeamed stems?
It is a bit inconsistent, I agree, but the way the properties work for beamed stems and the way the stem length adjustment property for an unbeamed stem works are different. Certainly there’s some potential for us to review this in future.