Musescore Chronology
Hi,
I've been wondering if MuseScore has some kind of chronology system that shows the changes that have been made. If not, I think it would be a useful addition to MuseScore!
Keep up the good work,
MRJ
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Comments
See:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/developers-handbook/release-notes
In reply to See: https://musescore.org… by Jm6stringer
Unless the OP is talking about a score's history.
In reply to Unless the OP is talking… by Jojo-Schmitz
Yes, I meant a sore's history. It would be nice to be able to see the timestamps and changes made, e.g. like in Google Docs.
In reply to Yes, I meant a sore's… by MRJ_MRJ
Use mscx files and Git for the history
In reply to Use mscx files and Git for… by Jojo-Schmitz
Could you please elaborate?
In reply to Could you please elaborate? by MRJ_MRJ
Git is a source code control system. Works best with plain text, hence mscx format
In reply to Git is a source code control… by Jojo-Schmitz
I don't understand what you mean.
In reply to I don't understand what you… by MRJ_MRJ
Can't really help you with that, sorry.
In reply to I don't understand what you… by MRJ_MRJ
I recommend doing a web search to learn about Git. It's a free / open source program that helps you manage revisions, and there is tons of information about it available online.
In reply to I recommend doing a web… by Marc Sabatella
(Updated with Jojo's proposal below)
It is indeed a problem to be able to compare changes in different git commits. using regular git commands you will only see updates in the xml files which will often be difficult to understand. I wrote a feature proposal in this very forum some years ago to address this:
https://musescore.org/en/node/313538
Which was then converted into a feature request (Suggestion) in the issue tracker:
#314036: invoke the score-comparison view from command line
In short, MuseScore already supports showing the difference between two versions of a score, but it is not possible to integrate with git. But that should be possible by adding some more command line options.
In reply to It is ended a problem to be… by AndreasKågedal
The latter is better notated as #314036: invoke the score-comparison view from command line ("[#314036]")
In reply to The latter is better notated… by Jojo-Schmitz
Thanks! I updated my comment.
In reply to Unless the OP is talking… by Jojo-Schmitz
Ah... a score's history.
However, I must say that the version chronology and release notes that document the changes that have been made to MuseScore over the years is a more spectacular read. ;-)
In reply to Ah... a score's history… by Jm6stringer
It would be much better than having to save all your changes and backing them up yourself.
In reply to It would be much better than… by MRJ_MRJ
Workaround
• Create new score, e.g. MyScore
• Save As MyScore.mscz
• Save As MyScore-000.mscz
• Close score
Update #1 :
1 • Open MyScore-000.mscz
2 • Save As MyScore-001.mscz
3 • Make changes, saving periodically
4 • Repeat 3 as required then finally ...
5 • Save As MyScore.mscz
6 • Close score
Update #2 :
1 • Open MyScore-001.mscz
2 • Save As MyScore-002.mscz
3 • Make changes, saving periodically
4 • Repeat 3 as required then finally ...
5 • Save As MyScore.mscz
6 • Close score
:
:
Update #123 :
1 • Open MyScore-122.mscz
2 • Save As MyScore-123.mscz
3 • Make changes, saving periodically
4 • Repeat 3 as required then finally ...
5 • Save As MyScore.mscz
6 • Close score
This keeps a history and maintains MyScore.mscz as the current version.
(But Git is a better solution)
In reply to Workaround • Create new… by yonah_ag
Nice...
Had to dust of my old mainframe programming cap (Fortran), then mentally iterate your steps to appreciate the underlying logic.
In reply to Nice... Had to dust of my… by Jm6stringer
Haha good one
My workaround commiting to not typing git commit:
Right click on mscz > create zip
Extracting and searching when needed is nightmare save for another day
In reply to Haha good one My workaround… by msfp
I use this sort of scheme when developing Microsoft Power BI reports, until the first release which becomes 1.0.0 and then I follow the same style as MuseScore release numbers.
The continuous same file name for the latest version means that the cloud published version does not keep changing its URL.
In reply to I use this sort of scheme… by yonah_ag
I don't know about ms src, could it be that git is already built into ms? There's a nice diff function.
In reply to I don't know about ms src,… by msfp
No, git is not built into MuseScore at all, but it is used to keep the source code.
The score-diff function is just comparing 2 files, not keeping a history of and sort
In reply to I don't know about ms src,… by msfp
No, git isn't build into MuseScore. But an MSCZ file is a ZIP and the only important thing in it is the MSCX file, so saving directly as MSCX is exactly the same as - but much easier than - saving as MSCZ then extracting the MSCX from that.
In reply to No, git isn't build into… by Marc Sabatella
Doesn't mscx lose all images?
In reply to Doesn't mscx lose any images? by yonah_ag
Well, it's not that they are "lost", they simply aren't included within the MSCX file itself (obviously, since it's just plain text). So if your score relies on images, you'd simply need to also manage those with git.
In reply to Well, it's not that they are… by Marc Sabatella
So they are lost from the file format itself which means that the mscx file is a lossy version of the mscz file. I think that I'll stick with manual SaveAs versioning since nothing is lost and it uses much less disk space.
In reply to So they are lost from the… by yonah_ag
It's "sort of" true, but only in a way that completely misses the point. The MSCZ contains an entirely unnecessary second copy of an image, which is still right there on your computer where it was before you added it to the score - assuming you added the image from a file. It is true that if add the image directly from the clipboard in a way where it was never saved as a file, it doesn't survive the save, so if you intend to use MSCX, definitely don't do that - save the file somewhere first.
But once you've enusred the image actually exists as a file, you're not losing anything at all by using MSCX - you're just avoiding unnecessary duplication. And while a single MSCZ file takes less space than a single MSCZ file, this less is true if there are images involved, and it won't be true at all by the time you store a dozen of so revisions in git. That's because git is extremely efficient at maintaining multiple revisions of text files, by storing only the "diffs". So 100 revisions of a score in git will virtually always take far less room than 100 copies of an MSCZ file, especially if images are involved, because now you've got 100 extra copies of those images, too.
In reply to It's "sort of" true, but… by Marc Sabatella
I guess for history versions the loss of images in the MSCX are not really an issue but it's something to be aware of in other circumstances. Storing diffs is certainly an excellent way to do things - I might even switch to Git for my history, (especially as my banner images are all saved and backed up.)
In reply to Doesn't mscx lose any images? by yonah_ag
Yes, sort of. Also this format isn't a viable option anymore with MuseScore 4, which splits up the file format into even more files, like a separate styles file, a settings file etc.
If you're on Windows then you could implement a more automated solution by using a PowerShell script. Here are some pointers for your situation:
https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/tip/PowerShell-commands-…
https://sumtips.com/snippets/powershell/copy-files-rename-duplicates-su…