Google Summmer of Code 2017, 2 months done, 1 to go !

As you may know, MuseScore is part of Google Summer of Code 2017. During the past two months, we had 4 students working on 4 projects to make MuseScore better ! Let me give you an overview of the current status and what to expect in the next month.

Accessibility

divya-urs, mentored by Marc Sabatella, worked on improving accessibility in MuseScore 3. Her first job was to make it easier to navigate through every element of a score with the keyboard. She delivered a nice solution that you can try now in the master nightlies. She also wrote some code to enable the navigation through the palette with the keyboard, her pull request is under review but will also end up in the nightlies. And she also worked on a way to assign shortcut for each cell in the palette. No pull request yet, but there will be one soon! You can follow development on divya-urs' blog.

Timeline, an overview of your score

What about a way to quickly navigate an orchestral score? A way to see at a glimpse the key signature or time signature changes, the empty and non empty measures by instruments? Look no further, JoshuaBonn1, mentored by ericfontainejazz, has made great progress in the implementation of the timeline. You can try it in the master nightlies and Joshua is waiting for your feedback in the Technology Preview forum where he posted several questions to refine his first implementation. He is already working on a better implementation. You can follow the progress on Joshua's blog, you will also find some screenshots!

Startup wizard and shortcut management

If you are using MuseScore with a non-QWERTY keyboard, you might know the frustration of reading about a shortcut in the handbook and the shortcut not working on your keyboard. Aryamanvinchhi, mentored by Jojo-Schmitz, started to solve this problem. When MuseScore starts for the first time, it will now ask you several questions, your language, your keyboard layout, your "music level" and it will try to pick the right shortcuts and workspace for you. Of course, you will still be able to customize everything but we hope that it will improve the first experience of MuseScore. Aryaman already made some progress and you can find a first iteration on this startup wizard in the master nightlies, dealing with shortcuts only. He worked mainly on the machinery and we need *your* feedback to define the right shortcut for your keyboard layout. An improved version of the startup wizard is in the work. You can follow the progress on Aryaman's blog

Crash reporting

In order to improve MuseScore stability, it would be great to have a way to capture crashes and send them to a central server where developers could go through them. nickhatz, mentored by me (lasconic) took up this challenge. He investigated breakpad and integrated with MuseScore. Unfortunately, he took several other commitments during the past two months, including a choir tour and a mandatory course he disclosed only recently. His progress were slow, despite a daily IRC meeting. I had to fail nickhatz after these two months working together, so he can focus on his course. He expressed the willing to keep on working on the project, on his own schedule, once he passed his final exam. So we might see some more progress in the coming months. You can follow the progress on nickhatz's blog.

Your feedback on any of these projects is very welcome ! You can comment here, on each blog post, or join us on the developer IRC channel #musescore on freenode.net.