[trunk], [nightly builds], etc. - feature discussion among users? where?

• Apr 9, 2011 - 15:25

I've become so enthused about MuseScore (especially given the remarkable stability and functionality of 1.0) that I've been paying increased attention to the Nightly Builds and their implication for future features.

Have others been following and testing the direction of MuseScore's development? Is there any interest in commenting on what we're finding or experiencing, and perhaps getting feedback or answers from the development team?

I've encountered occasional queries and remarks about issues relating to the "trunk," but I'm not aware of any ongoing general conversation about it. Have I missed something?

And in any case, which subforum is presently the best place to inquire about feature behavior in the Nightly Builds?

For what it's worth, my primary interest is piano music and the retypesetting of public domain scores that I feel could use a makeover. My particular concern in future versions of MuseScore is the implementation of Fingering (i.e., controlling the anchoring and the positioning of fingering text with Text Styles. Complex keyboard music has requirements that are both basic and specific, and I would LOVE to find a discussion/description of what's in the works.

Thanks in advance for any comments or information.

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• Apr 9, 2011 - 17:25

I'm in a similar position as you - enthusiastic user hoping to get sense of what's coming and ideally have a voice in any discussions. Mostly, I get the sense that most of the direction comes from feature requests in these forums as well as in the Issue tracker (see link at right).

There is a developer's mailing list (you can get to it via the Development link at right), but it doesn't seem to be used that much in the way you or I might be interested in (ie, discussing the design of new features from a user perspective), and I figure it's not my place to rock that boat.

I did propose and ultimately create a "scrapbook" section of the Development section of this site, where developers (and users) could start to document new features in progress. Not a wish list, but a "here's what's actually been added" list. There's only a few things there right now, though. My intention has been to go through one of the nightly build and really take inventory and try to at least list all the new features, but I keep not having the time to devote to that. Anyhow, one goal would be to help people like you and I see what's there so we can try things out and see how they work, which will in turn enable us to better focus our own requests for enhancements. The other goal is to give everyone a good starting point for whenever it becomes time to write up *real* documentation.

I know there have been a number of threads here on the forums from people asking for enhancements to fingering, so do search those out if you haven't already. And I know that Werner (lead developer) has been busy adding features he has found necessarily/useful in producing a new "free" edition of Bach's Goldberg Variations (see the artlcle linked from the main musescore.org page), which I would assume will hit on many of the piano-specific issues you might be dealing with. So it does seem quite possible that improvements to fingering might be something that would be considered for 2.0, and with the Goldberg project in particular seeming to drive some of the development right now, this could be a good time to voice your thoughts.

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• Apr 9, 2011 - 19:00

I think an additional sub-forum explicitly dedicated to the 'next' version (trunk or 2.0 or whatever it will be called) would be USEFUL!

Particularly as the branch between 1.0 and trunk is going to go no for a while. What Thomas, lasonic (and of course Werner) think of this?

Marc: I looked for that development 'scrapbook' of yours, but I could not find it anywhere; is it on line? do you have a link?

Thanks,

M.

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• Apr 10, 2011 - 10:16

Some new features are also documented in the handbook at the end 'New features for MuseScore 2.0" http://musescore.org/en/handbook

To make things clear regarding trunk, branch, nightlies etc... for people who are not familiar with this :

  • MuseScore 1.0 has been released with a source code living in mscore0.9.6 branch. Since the release, we fixed a couple of critical issue on this code base. We try to fix only critical bugs or easy bugs with high impact. There is currently no easy way of testing these bug fixes since we don't do nightly builds on this branch. I think we will release 1.X on this branch with a couple of prereleases first
  • In parallel of this effort, new features are added in another codebase named 'trunk". This codebase has a lot of new features compared to MuseScore 1.0, some of them are highly experimental and might even be hidden from the normal user or removed in the next release. Nightly build are version of MuseScore built every night and based on this codebase

The feature request forum is a good place to start a discussion about new features. Constructed feature requests can then be posted in the issue tracker. Thomas and I are very often on IRC #musescore on freenode.net. Werner is joining sometimes.

Last point, keep in mind that open source development is not a democracy. Feature requests discussion are great and full of valuable information but In the end, the one who decide which feature is added and how it works is the one who actually code and that's mainly Werner.

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