MuseScore as a portable app
Hi, I just joined here, sorry if this info has been covered before.
I'm currently running a bunch of portable Windows applications from my USB drive, and I'm really in love with this concept.
How hard would it be to make MuseScore into a portable app? As I understand it, the main problems are with writing info to the registry, and (in this case) looking for the fonts on the USB drive instead of in the default location.
Is this something that would be easy to do?
Comments
There is a portable version on http://www.winpenpack.com/main/download.php?view.965 but it's from the previous 0.9.2 version which is quite old. I guess if the downloads would go up or several people would request a new release, perhaps they would build one. More info on the WinPenPack forum
I just tried downloading X-MuseScore, and it doesn't work on my machine at home... Haven't tried it at work yet though. The screen won't display the sheet at all, it won't display anything in the palettes, and most of the top menu buttons are simply not there.
I'm guessing it's either a fonts issue, or something having to do with Qt on Windows (?).
Not your problem obviously, you didn't actually package the portable version. I just wanted to point it out for other forum readers.
In reply to No go on Italian version by Karlheinz
Are you using win Vista? Can you make sure you run it as administrator?
A similar problem report was filed some time ago on the mailing list (http://n2.nabble.com/When-I-open-any-score%2C-nothing-is-displayed.-tt6…) and apparently, this was the solution: "If you log on using an administrator account then MuseScore works without a problem."
I am not using Vista (and hopefully never will).
At home - which is where I tested it - I am using Win2K SP4.
However, I just now tested it on WinXP at work, and everything seems OK.
One thing I didn't realize: By default, X-MuseScore opens to a blank page (not the demo), which has no instruments assigned and no staves. This doesn't really affect my problem, but because of this, I did at first think something was wrong on the WinXP machine (which it's not).
From the comments on the site, I'm guessing it's some sort of issue with Qt and Win2K. The version that X-MuseScore uses is still 4.3.3, so that might very well be the problem.
Incidentally - I tried installing the latest MuseScore on my Win2K machine, and I also got some of the same problems (though not nearly as bad). What version of Qt ships with v0.9.3?
In reply to More oddness by Karlheinz
Thanks for the explanation! MuseScore 0.9.3 uses Qt 4.4.2.
In reply to Qt by Thomas
Do I need to download Qt seperately from MuseScore? Would it help if I installed v4.4.3?
I went to the Qt site to download it, and the installer was 150Mb (!) so I wanted to ask here before I did that.
It also seems weird that it would work on WinXP (with no Qt other than the one on the USB drive) and not on Win2K...?
In reply to Qt by Karlheinz
You don't need to install Qt to run MuseScore, I don't know why it does not work on Win2k.
What do you mean when you told us that the behaviour is not aas bad when you install on Win2k and not using the portable version ?
I didn't test MuseScore on win2k, but I'm pretty sure Qt version shipped with Musescore is build on at least a WinXP computer.
In reply to You don't need to install Qt by [DELETED] 5
> What do you mean when you told us that the behaviour is not aas bad when you install on Win2k and not using the portable version ?
X-MuseScore is a version behind 0.9.3, and uses an older version of Qt.
Both versions won't display certain things on my Win2K machine, that show up fine on WinXP. In the portable version, none of the top menu buttons show up at all, and when you open the Palettes window (which is closed by default) there is not a single icon in there - just blank space.
On 0.9.3, SOME of the top menu buttons show up (not all of the notes), and though some icons show up in the Palettes window, they're messed up in some way (e.g. Staves shows bar lines, but not the clefs).
When I get home, I can take some screenshots - that would probably be best.
Did you try logging on to Windows using an administrator account as suggested by Thomas?
In reply to Administrator account by David Bolton
I do not have anything but an Administrator account on my Windows 2000 machine at home.
I actually did NOT log in as Administrator on Windows XP at work - yet that's the one that works fine.
That problem has to do with "security" features which I think are specific to Vista, so I don't think it's the problem.
Okay - here are two screenshots:
MuseScore 0.9.3:
http://www.khznoise.net/mscore_0_9_3.jpg
X-MuseScore 0.9.2:
http://www.khznoise.net/mscore_0_9_2.jpg
Pay special attention to the background paper, and the upper menus.
Both taken on the same machine, running Windows 2000. One odd thing: I installed X-MuseScore to my USB drive first, and only installed 0.9.3 afterwards. Before I installed 0.9.3, the staff lines you see in the second screen shot were NOT showing up; now they are. Odd.
Should I file this as a bug report? We seem to be getting pretty off-topic.
In reply to Screenshots by Karlheinz
Your screenshots match those provided by Daniel Volpin. We haven't found what is causing the problem yet. It is the SVG-based icons that appear correctly and the font-based icons that appear blank.
A portable version for MuseScore is in the works at http://portableapps.com/node/18149