unexpected closes on 1.0

• May 11, 2011 - 23:06

OK, when I am working on my arrangement of Hungarian March, it's a little slow but that didn't bother me. But what does is when it closes randomly when i copy-paste, playback, etc. but it's always at random, its not every time. Help?
(MuseScore 1.0, Windows XP)

Comments

• May 13, 2011 - 15:01

I would have to respectfully disagree with you. I've been a regular MuseScore user for almost two years now (since version 0.9.5), and I find that it crashes very infrequently. I've written one instrument solo parts, four part chorus arrangements, and full concert band pieces with large numbers of instruments, and I can't honestly remember the last time it crashed for me. I used Finale for 8 years before moving to MuseScore, and it crashed just as frequently as what I've experienced with MuseScore - and I paid nearly $600 for Finale.

If you experience a crash, come here and report it, along with instructions on how to reproduce it. Crashes aren't just random, they're caused by something specific. If you can tell the developers what that specific reason is, they can fix it. I find it a little offensive of you to say "you can't expect loads from a open source program," since I've since much more responsive support out of MuseScore developers (and for that matter other users like myself) than I ever did with Finale. Major problems and quirks with Finale went unfixed for 8 years, while they added a bunch of random "features" that few people wanted, needed, or use - all while they wanted me fork out another $150-$200 to upgrade every year. By contrast, MuseScore developers want user reports and input, and they fix problems and add the most requested features.

I know it's frustrating when it crashes, but please try to refrain from being demeaning to the program, and by extension the developers and users.

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• May 13, 2011 - 15:25

Good job with the donations.
Maybe it's just probability? It also happens in other programs like sibeleus but i stopped using it because i simply... lost the disk.
But I'd still say they've done great work on this program.
I don't think half the people who uses the program knows what causes these bugs, probs even me.
Besides, i only started using MuseScores just 3 days ago from this post. =D

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• May 13, 2011 - 15:41

One thing I've noticed from posts in these forums - it's newcomers to MuseScore who often tend to experience the most crashes, because they are trying to do things that aren't supposed to work in the first place, and handling of those situations tends to be what leads to most crashes in *any* program. Once you get a better feel for what's supposed to what isn't, you're less likely to run into the cases where MuseScore doesn't handle unexpected input properly, because you won't be doing so many unexpected things.

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• May 13, 2011 - 15:56

I take the opposite view of software as I also write apps for a hobby. It's the unexpected things that should be trapped and handled cleanly or else the software gets a bad rep. I've also learned what not to do, and likely would have a tough time to now recall what they are, but there are interface things that I've reported over the past months that, if fixed, would make MS more robust.

I fully understand that fixes take time, and that it's the nasty ones that take precedent. However, somehow putting restrictions on error-prone UI operations hould also be handled as it makes the experience for new users much better, and should make the support easier.

For openers, why can you drag rests and other objects all over the score, away from the measure where they should be?
Why can you drag the score off the screen, seemingly forever?

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• May 13, 2011 - 18:59

Oh, I'm not saying unexpected things *should* lead to crashes; I'm just observing they often *do*. Simply because it's hard to anticipate every possible unexpected thing someone might try. So it's common that new users see more crashes than more experienced users. I observe this to hopefully lessen the frustration new users might feel - if you stick with the software long enough to learn to use it, crashes become much less common. But the more of these crashes that are reported, the better, because then they can be fixed.

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• May 13, 2011 - 19:13

Marc, I'm not entirely disagreeing with you, I just find the apologetics tiring. "Try it for a while, and learn what _not_ to do, so you will be happy with it" seems to be the mantra given to new users, and there should be no need to say that. It's the first-time experience that is the make or break for users. If someone downloads an open-source (free) app and it leads to nothing but frustration, they will either force themselves to learn it because they absolutely need to (and partake in the development), they abandon it completely, or they won't go back for a long time, long enough (subjective time) so that hopefully things have matured to be more stable.

Somehow catching & documenting the newbie things, and fixing or finding ways to stop them is the only sensible approach for the long-term survival of MS, and any open-source project for that matter. Sometimes this is a catch-22 problem.

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• May 13, 2011 - 19:36

Understood. I guess I'd just re-iterate that I intend my comments not to be excusing MuseScore's behavior - just encouraging to new users who may not realize that MuseScore doesn't actually crash in regular use as often as they might be thinking. The goal is simply to help them get to a point of being able to use the program. And yes, fixing the bugs is an equally important part of that.

Not everyone has the experience with software development that you or I have to realize that many of the crashes they are seeing are ones they probably won't be seeing once they get more familiar with the program. If I thought people understood that already, then indeed, I wouldn't see any need to point this out. But I am pretty sure most people don't realize the extent to which it is the "unexpected input" cases that really do lead to more crashes than anything else. And in particular, commercial programs do tend to be more robust in these areas than open source programs.

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• May 13, 2011 - 20:04

newbie things. Just a few weeks ago, I was on the verge of dumping MuseScore, because answers were so hard to find. But that's over with, guys. You're stuck with me now.... ;-)

I'm still trying to give away the fruits of my schlep up the learning curve, compiled in that "Quick Answers" document. FWIW, here's the latest version, as an attachment.

-- J.S.

Attachment Size
MuseScoreQuickAnswers.doc 50 KB

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• May 16, 2011 - 19:12

I don't know if you've in conversation with the development team about this, but I think Thomas is the guy who kind of oversees the web site big picture stuff like that. Since this is getting off-topic, I'm starting a new thread in the Documentation forum to discuss some ideas.

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• May 14, 2011 - 00:09

OK, lots of comments....wow. Well if I read correctly, the wrong thing I am doing is making a concert band piece from the concert band pre-made score and copy and pasting? Because that's all I have been really doing with it. And everytime I would copy-paste the piccolo part to the flute part it would say "MuseScore has encountered a problem and needs to close." I don't get it any more, but I would like to know what I did so I would know in the future if it ever happens again. And sorry for the sarcasm. Didn't mean to seem rude or nothing at the beggining.

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• May 14, 2011 - 01:18

I don't think anyone has suggested you're doing anything wrong, or what you might doing wrong if so. I'm just observing that *in general*, it's often trying to do something "wrong" - like hitting a key that isn't supposed to do anything anyhow - that leads to crashes. And my comment wasn't actually about your post - it was about the post from the user who said he saw "LOTS" of crashes in just the first three days, and again, was just intended to encourage him to stick with it.

Now, as for your issue, one problem is that there isn't a lot of detail to do on. Obviously, copy & paste is something you should be able to do, and it does usually work. But it appears from reports here that it's probably one of the buggier areas of the program. It seems like it is normally safe to copy complete measures, or when copying fragments of measures, it seems safest if the source and destination are both the same beat. position within their respective measures. It's things like copying a bunch of notes starting on the "and" of 2 and pasting them to start on 4 that seem most problematic. Again, these sorts of things *should* work, and if you encountered specific reproducible cases where they don't, it would be great if you could submit an issue. But if you browse the forums and issue tracker, you'll see quite a few known cases where it doesn't. Most don't lead to crashes, though - just weird results.

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• May 14, 2011 - 01:59

Oh, well I know I didn't hit any wrong keys, I made sure of that because I use the mouse mostly in MuseScore, except for maybe when I put down triplets (or anything of the sort) or just feel like using the keyboard. I used the mouse when the crashes occurred mostly. And I know that a whole bunch of people have crash issues as well. And I agree, MuseScore really shouldn't crash on copy-paste. It's kind of crazy. But, like I stated in my issue, the crashes sometimes occur on random and it could be when I'm entering notes, copy-pasting, making triplets (or anything of the sort), or any other thing that you would do on MuseScore. All I want is to be able to use MuseScore without the box that says "MuseScore has encountered a problem and needs to close", just like many other people.

I guess some useful information would be that my crashes mainly occur when I am using the concert band premade score. And the one I stated in the issue (Hungarian March Arr.) is complete, finished.

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• May 16, 2011 - 13:35

Unfortunatly, it's not useful. Something useful for developers it's a very detailed way of reproducing the bug starting from a sane score that you can attach to your post or from scratch, and giving exact steps to reproduce. Which key you press, where you click etc... If you manage to do this, developers might be able to solve the issue, if not, it's almost not useful to report the bug... since everybody agrees that MuseScore should not crash, never.

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• May 16, 2011 - 18:25

pre-existing scores, perhaps MuseScore could borrow an idea that we have in AutoCAD. AutoCAD has a function to check for errors in a .DWG file. You have the option of either flagging and reporting errors, or letting the program make automatic fixes. Of course, creating a "Sanity Check" function would be a very large amount of work for the programmers.

-- J.S.

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• May 22, 2011 - 01:41

I am pretty new to the program, but I am also experiencing unexpected program closures on Windows 7. I have looked at the computer environment and not running anything in the background. If it means anything, I am a bagpiper and am writing mostly bagpipe scores. (Lots of gracenotes). It appears that my problems are happening whenever I start adding a large number of gracenotes. I am a mouse user (I haven't gotten the hang of using the keyboard for input yet), and I really don't know what I am doing wrong. I would appreciate any help that you could offer.

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• May 22, 2011 - 15:33

It looks like, when editing, whenever I am adding multiple grace notes and moving their position. It started when I saved a piece into parts, and is happening every time I start editing a piece of music now. I can't stay on the program long enough to find out what created the problem. I am thinking of doing an uninstall and reboot to see if my system corrupted a file somewhere. I am beginning to think that it is my system and not the program itself. I also have the program saved to my desktop and will try to see if it is happening there, too.

Thank you for your input and I will keep you posted if the problem corrects itself after the reboot.

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