Cross-version parameters and preferences
Each new version generates incompatibilities between files.
I've lived a bad experience between V2 and V3 when I realized that my carefully tuned configuration was simply unuseable by MS3 :-(
This is the same with scores, prototypes, styles, etc.
Can you please try to implement conversion (forth and back) between versions?
I'm plus or minus obliged to work with Windows and Linux versions concurrently and this is a limiting factor: if I save a score with a recent version, I'm no more able to open it with a previous one, even a recent previous one.
Comments
Just install MuseScore 2 and MuseScore 3 (and 1, and, soon, 4), they do peacefully coexist
In reply to Just install MuseScore 2 and… by Jojo-Schmitz
Not so peaceful. When I installed 4 alpha it made itself the default program to open .mscz files. It would have been kinder if such an "experimental" version left that file association alone. It was a nuisance to have scores opened in version 4 when clicking on the file, and somewhat worrying given the lack of guarantee that 4 alpha will not change the score so that it may not work with previous versions. I have changed the file associations manually so that I have to purposefully use 4 alpha rather than finding i am using it by accident.
In reply to Not so peaceful. When I… by SteveBlower
True, the one installed last is set up for being started by default when double-clicking s score file. Pretty annoying for an Alpha version (and previous Alphas didn't do this), but very normal for a release version
I just reinstalled 3.6.2 to get this sorted
In general, each version makes improvements, but that does indeed mean that in scores that implemented their own workarounds for deficiencies in older versions, those workarounds might turn out to be counterproductive. Like if you added extra space somewhere that MuseScore didn't add enough, now there will be too much once that issue is fixed. MuseScore 3 fixed a ton of such problems that had existed in MuseScore 2, so yes, a lot of scores needed updating. An option was provided to remove those manual adjustments, and for most scores, that was all that was needed. But sometimes additional adjustments might have been required to workaround limitations that still existed in MuseScore 3. Or maybe you had made manual adjustments for other reasons than as workarounds for layout issues, and those need to be preserved.
Unfortunately there is no possible way for a computer program to figure out for sure which adjustments are which. MuseScore 3 did some automatic updating of these adjustments based on the most common cases we knew about from user reports that included specific scores with specific examples, but no AI could possibly catch them all.
I expect the situation to be similar with MuseScore 4. Tons of fantastic improvements, but that does mean many of the old workarounds will be counterproductive and will thus need to be reset, and it will continue to be impossible for any computer program to figure which adjustments should be reset and which you ere using for other purposes. So, the program will continue to do it's best to guess based on the most common cases reported by users with specific examples, but it will remain beyond the capabilities of current AI technology to do so perfectly all the time.