characteristic instabilities in Nightlies

• Sep 30, 2014 - 14:17

I can't do 'real' work in Beta 1 because of its inability to save cross-staff notation, and, for the time being, I am giving up attempting to use the Nightlies until they become more stable. In particular:

slurs
hairpins
ottavas
height adjustments to arpeggios

are completely unpredictable in terms of what will and what will not 'survive the save and re-load process', to use a phrase I've seen here.

Given that I use MuseScore for piano music and nothing more, I have a feeling that what I'm experiencing is just the tip of the iceberg. I honestly wonder if Beta 1 wasn't brought out prematurely, as there are just too many regressions in the Nightlies now for them to be worthwhile.

It honestly doesn't help to see so many of my comments and 'concerns' go unaddressed here. For a user community that prides itself on the quality of communication in the forums, I can say that one of those qualities is certainly not, in my personal experience, any sense of inclusion. There's an inner circle here of developers who choose to acknowledge - or ignore - people at their discretion.

I'm pretty much through here. I understand now that the product is what it is, and it will be what it will be. Beta testers - powers users who care about the product - should be valued here, and I don't feel that at all. When there's a stable release, I'll use it - but I will not continue to comment on what's in development.

Comments

• Sep 30, 2014 - 14:36

I am very sorry you feel this way. Which problems do you feel are unaddressed? If you just mean the bugs haven't been fixed already, that's normal - bugs are fixed as we can, but there was never meant to be any guarantee they'd be fixed in any particular time frame. But if you filed issues to the issue tracker, then we definitely known about them and will get to them as we can. I recall seeing quite a few valuable contributions from you and engaging in discussion, so I'm actually quite surprised you are feeling ignored.

Anyhow, have you reported the problems you refer to above? I can't recall any issues in tracker on these topics. Nor am I aware of any changes in these area that would have broken any of those things since the Beta. Are you saying they work in the Beta but stopped working some time after? This is all important information we'd want to know in order to fix any of these issues!

EDIT: regarding slurs, I did find a forum topic you started, in which I did work with you to understand the source of the problem, and showed you how to get the correct results. The bug itself hasn't been fixed, true, but again, there was never meant to be any sort of guarantee on *when* reported bugs would get fixed. And in any event, it seems you never filed that issue to the tracker, which is the most important step if you want something fixed.

As for the Beta being "premature", you have to understand what a Beta is. It is *not* something meant for real work, although some choose to take that risk. We put it out once we had fixed all the bugs that we knew of that would prevent people from doing real work, but one of the main points of a Beta is to get more people testing it so we can find more bugs. So it's perfectly normal and to be expected that there will be bugs found in a Beta release - that is indeed the whole point.

Reply

• Sep 30, 2014 - 14:58

This post is a troll and not worth spending time on. It's just a misalignment of expectancies. Steve seems to believe they are hundreds of people working on MuseScore and that we can afford instand feedback on each single forum post while we all know that 90% of the code is written by a single person helped by a couple dozens of contributors.

Let's spend time on what matters, this former post of stevebob http://musescore.org/en/node/33816 Can we reproduce it? If yes, let's file a proper bug report and fix it.

Reply

• Oct 1, 2014 - 16:42

This bug is fixed. As far as I know there are no reported bugs with Hairpin, Ottavas or Arpeggio not being restored after a open/save. If you encounter such a problem, you are welcome to give steps by steps instructions to reproduce it so that we can fix it.

Reply

• Oct 1, 2014 - 17:15

FWIW, I believe he must have been referring to this:

http://musescore.org/en/node/33456

But indeed, no steps to reproduce, nor even a sample score showing the problem, so not much we can do.

I have no doubt there are real bugs in there somewhere causing the problems he was seeing, but I rather doubt they actually are regressions in that or any other nightly build, since really, nothing significant changed in the code that would have been likely to have affected any of that since the Beta. So I suspect he was simply running into a problem that had been in the Beta but that he hadn't happened to have triggered yet.

stevebob or anyone who feels like testing those features further to see if they can reproduce whatever the problem was that he was seeing, that would be most welcome.

Reply

• Oct 3, 2014 - 14:58

THIS is an example of the attitude I was addressing. I don't appreciate being called a troll, Lasconic, as I have made far too many meaningful contributions here to be treated so callously by you.

You would do well never to assume things about what I - or anyone else here - 'seems to believe'. I know English is not your first language, and I have given you latitude in the past when you've frankly come across as an a-hole. This time, however, I think your words are deliberately chosen and your meaning is plain.

You might ask yourself whom this wonderful piece of software is intended for and what its intended purpose is. The answer unquestionably includes people like ME. I love music notation, I love software, and I am a power user. It is so insulting for you to dismiss me as some kind of ingrate who imagines there are 'hundreds' of developers at my beck and call to provide instant feedback. I do not! Do you believe there are hundreds of beta testers eager to report issues, problems, concerns and instabilities? That doesn't appear to be the case either, unless they all confer privately with developers in some forum of which I'm unaware.

In my opinion, there really needs to be greater mutual respect here for a mutually supportive relationship between developers and end-users. I honestly think that you own attitude here demonstrates that such support - and surely any sense of community or collegiality - is sorely lacking. To paraphrase Thomas's remarks a while ago in a different context, 'We can do better than this.'

Reply

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.