Maintaining layout compatability with 1.3
One of the most annoying things when moving from one version to the next version of software, is to find that previously created files do not open in the new version. Or, worse still, they open but layout and visual styles are completely different.
Whilst testing a nightly version (MuseScoreNightly-2014-02-11-1208-831686d.7z), I found just this situation.
I have a number of scores created with version 1.3, where the chord names style xml was changed to be cchords_muse_it.xml.
When I opened a file, the names were no-longer in the French/Italien style and the default distance from the stave was no-longer respected.
In addition, the visual rendering at the default zoom level is not as good as with v1.3.
Different fonts ?
I could not see any bug report for this kind of thing, nor a development need.
Is it planned to cover this aspect of backwards comparability ?
Comments
in general, aside from small differences in note spacing that can occasionally result in a different number of measures per system if you did not lock in your layout with page breaks and reduced stretch, scores *should* look the same. Right now there are some major changes underway in text handling, so there are bugs that can cause text layout to be off, and pedal marking position has also been broken for a while, but again - overall, things should look more or less the same.
In particular, custom chord description styles should still work, as should the distance to staff you have configured. If you have a case where there is not happening, you should submit an issue to the tracker with a sample score and steps to reproduce - including, in this case, a copy of your custom chord description file. Some of the recent changes have also broken a couple of things about chord symbol rendering, so it's possible what you are seeing is a known temporary issue, but I haven't tried a file with a custom chord description file lately.
BTW, 2.0 adds native support for French/Italian chord symbols; it will no longer be necessary to use custom chord description files for that purpose. But existing files should still work.
As for overall rendering, the default music font hasn't changed default but the text font has - to FreeSerif. I too see odd rendering artifacts on-screen from time to time - the capital "A" in particular tends to lose it's horizontal bar. I guess this is probably a Qt issue.
In reply to in general, aside from small by Marc Sabatella
Thanks for your comments Mark.
I will therefore open an issue for tracking.