Preventing musescore from overriding existing styles when loading scores.

• Apr 19, 2021 - 22:50

Ever since Musescore 3.6, I am unable to load existing scores without any styling changes (such as using Jazz fonts, etc) being overridden by musescore. I have unchecked all the relevant options that I can find (such as "Show option to apply improved engraving", etc), but I still can't find any way to prevent Musescore from obliterating all of my styling efforts.

Are there any settings that I've missed that might prevent this from happening? And no, before anyone asks, manually applying a style file every time I open a score is not an acceptable solution.


Comments

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

You are correct - looking back it seems that I interpreted that to mean "for non musescore-3 scores", rather than for all scores that I load. I think this is why I got particularly frustrated, as I had purposefully opened my scores, applied "my" styling, and then saved them, thinking that that would prevent musescore from "updating" them to the new style.

In reply to by harries.adam

To be clear - it you don't check the "Remember my choice and don't ask again" box, the dialog only applies to the current score, exactly as you'd expect. But if you do check that box, you are telling MuseScore to remember your choice and not ask again, then indeed MuseScore does exactly that. Not sure why you'd find it frustrating that MsueScore obeys your explicit instruction? But you can get the dialog box by going to Edit / Preferences / Import and checking the option to show the dialog.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

> Not sure why you'd find it frustrating that MsueScore obeys your explicit instruction

The instruction, as I mentioned in another comment, is somewhat ambigious. It specifically says "since this file was created in MuseScore 3.5.0, some layout changes may occur", which I interpreted to mean that this option applied only to old scores. It would be mind bogglingly stupid to have it apply to scores created since the change, and specifically styled to not use the new fonts, in my opinion.

> But you can get the dialog box by going to Edit / Preferences / Import and checking the option to show the dialog

Right, so in order to stop musescore mangling my formatting, I have to (unintuitively) re-enable a dialog that only opens when you open a score, uncheck a box there, and then try and re-open my score. That's all assuming that I'm not confused by the ambiguity as to which scores the option applies to.

I hope you can understand why that is a frustrating workflow.

In reply to by harries.adam

It does apply only to old scores. not sure where you got the idea that it would be otherwise. It works exactly as it should and as you seem to be saying you'd want - older scores show the dialog so you have the opportunity to choose whether to use the new fonts or not, new ones don't show the dialog because you presumably already made that choice.

So, yes, the fact that you seem to have mistakenly told MuseScore to update all your old scores to the new fonts without asking upon opening does mean you now need to take steps to correct that mistake. Still, it takes only a few seconds to correct even seemingly disastrous mistakes like that. In normal use, it's not an issue, because the dialog would simply show for every score unless you choose not to display it in the future and actually mean it. Which is to say, the workflow for the average person is exactly as one would expect. It's only when making the mistake of telling MuseScore to do something you don't actually want it to do, and then compound that mistake by saying you don't want to be asked about this again, that you need to spend those few extra seconds correcting the problem.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I “got the idea” that it might apply to later scores because it did modify the styling of scores that I had specifically saved with Musescore 3.6.2 to try and understand what files it was modifying.

My point about the workflow is not about the time taken, but about how non-obvious a solution it is. I’d happily spend those seconds correcting the issue if I knew the steps that I needed to take, but those steps are ambiguous and user hostile.

In reply to by harries.adam

I would agree it could potnetially be easier to figure out out how to undo that mistake. Feel free to offer a suggestion!

But, again - under no circumstances does MuseScore alter style of scores on load if you don't ask it to. Not for scores imported from 3.5, not for scores imported from older versions still, and certainly not once a score is actually saved in 3.6.

So once again, if you believe you a case where a score looks different upon loading into 3.6 than it did before, then in order to start investigating, we would need you to attach the actual score and precise steps to reproduce the problem.

Programs do have bugs and it's certainly possible one of your scores happens to hit some sort of rare case bug that has thus far escaped our own extensive testing and hasn't been reported by any of the other millions of users. That is why it would be so crucial for you to help us track that this one-in-a-million corner case by attaching the score the steps to reproduce the problem.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I think the key thing would be to offer the settings that are in the dialog (e.g. "apply new fonts to older musescore files") separately in the preferences pane. That was where I was expecting to see them, and having to instead enable a dialog (which only opens when opening a file), then open a file, is two more steps of interaction (and quite obtuse ones) from where I expected to see the option.

I, admittedly, am now having trouble reproducing the issue, so I think you can rest assured that there isn't a bug here. There is still a big issue with the user experience of changing the settings, but I think that has a much smaller impact.

In reply to by harries.adam

I could see having such an option separately. But I would note, such a setting does already exist, not as a preference, but within the style dialog so you can apply it on command or not. Just go to Format / Style and hit "Reset All Styles To Default". Or if you literally want just the notation font, change that only, on the Score tab.

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