Musescore 2.0.3 text won't save if box highlighted--but looks like it does

• Oct 1, 2016 - 08:04

I'm sure someone must have reported this before, but on the Issues page when I select 2.0.3 and put "text" in the 'Search for' box, nothing comes up, so here goes:

In the current stable release of Musescore, if you right-click to Add > Text in a Vertical Frame (probably horizontal too, though I didn't test for that), and you finish typing your text, and then immediately save WITHOUT MOVING FOCUS AWAY FROM THE FRAME--in other words, with the frame still highlighted--the asterisk in the filename tab will vanish. This is the signal that the file have been successfully saved.

BUT IT IS A FALSE SIGNAL. The file does NOT save. If you then immediately close Musescore, say with Alt-F4, because that text was the last change you needed to make, you're hosed. Re-open the file and the text will not be there. The "hidden file" backups are no help because Musescore doesn't ever save the text in the first place.

Fixing this needs to be a top priority for Musescore 3. I have just discovered this bug and have lost many hours of work over hundreds of files because of it. This is the kind of occurrence that makes one start thinking about payfer apps like Sibelius.


Comments

Hmm, when I try this, the file *does* save. But the recently added text is not added. Meaning, you would at most lose a few *seconds* of work, no more. Can you provide more preicse steps to reproduce a more serious problem? Or maybe you are saying you've lost a few seconds of work per file over many files. That could well be given what I understand about your extremely unusual workflow. Anyhow, I can confirm the recently added text is not saved, which is indeed a bug. Please report it officially via the issue teacker (eg, use Help / Report a Bug from within MuseScore).

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

> Please report it officially
Done.

> Meaning, you would at most lose a few *seconds*
> of work, no more.

Marc, don't make assumptions. It should be obvious that how much work one loses is dependent on how much text was added and how much synthesis went into its composition. In my case it was never less than a minute-and-a-half, and sometimes around five to ten minutes' worth, depending on whether the composer and/or work was well-known or little known to me. Little-known material required more research and more informational text, sometimes as much as a fairly long paragraph. And that's only if the Musescorer included all the pertinent identifying information (Opus or cat. number plus piece number within the collection, if the total opus was a multi-piece composition). If they did not (see next paragraph), the amount of time represented by the lost text could go to half an hour or beyond.

> maybe you are saying you've lost a few
> seconds of work per file over many files

Yes--except, as I indicated above, in my case it was not merely "a few seconds". At an average of four minutes, that loss over hundreds of files comes to a total loss numbering well into hours--all of which needs to be re-created from scratch because after a day or two the short-term memory of exact details is lost. At stake are not merely details concerning composition (dates and so on) but also opus & catalog numbers, exact titles, etc., which Musescorers often fail to include with their post and which must therefore be figured out on ones' own. Far too many posters just slap up their transcription with something like "Scarlatti Sonata", with further information included neither on the download page nor in the score itself, and to identify it precisely requires consulting the most likely scores at IMSLP. Believe me, that takes a lot more than just "a few seconds". Losing the results is a major problem.

In reply to by Ironword

Understood. Again, we're not all familiar with your highly unusual workflow, so it's hard to understand sometimes until we are provided with the necessary context, especially in light of the fact you suggested the file wasn't even saved when it actually was. So it wasn't clear what you were really talking about.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

The technical detail of whether the file saved or not is irrelevant here; the issue is the fact that the text didn't save, which in my case was tantamount to the file itself not saving, since the text is the only aspect of the files I've been modifying; and that should have been obvious enough even from the limited context of my post. After all, my sole practical concern was clearly with text not being saved.

And even had my report of the problem been much more confused and hazy than it was, I'm not at all sure what such technical detail has to do with the veracity of my report that I lost several hours' worth of work. When someone says they lost a certain amount of work, surely you should assume--since it's their work, not yours--that they know whereof they speak rather better than you do.

In reply to by Ironword

The reason I mentioned the technical discrepancy is just that it made it hard for us to understand the nature of the bug. Simply put, it sounded like you were saying something that didn't fit with my experience when I tried to reproduce the bug, so I needed clarification. No one is saying it is not a bug or shouldn't be fixed or that you did not I. Fact lose work. But we needed to understand what work was actually lost to make sure we fix the right bug.

As for having a simple workaround in the current version. Get into the habit of pressing Esc when you've finished typing your text. It'll make sure you leave the edit text mode and the text then will be fully added to the score, leading to it being saved correctly as well.

Well, yes, duh. I figured that out for myself as soon as I discovered the bug, thank you very much. But because this is a BUG and not expected behavior, it went unsuspected for quite a long time (many hours of work over a number of days). I only caught it by accident.

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