Writing to existing file upon save

• Feb 7, 2015 - 04:04

It seems that MuseScore replaces an existing file as a whole every time it is saved.

I think it would be better if it wrote changes to the file (or whatever the term is). That way, I can know the original date of creation, and I don't have to change the extension to hidden every time. I think other software tends to do this.

There was a brief discussion on IRC a few months ago, but I can't remember why this isn't done.


Comments

In reply to by chen lung

You really want to have the same stupid behavior as Windows does by default?
I think that is a pretty bad idea.
Musecscore does on 1st safe of a changed file rename the unchanged file to ".file.mscz," and then creates a new with the changes in.
It should keep the creation date, but I'm not sure that this exists on Mac. The standard UNIX has 3 timestamps, CTIME (change metadata), MTIME (modify content) and ATIME (access), no create. Linux has an additional birth timestamp, not sure about Mac or Windows

It may also allow the user to take advantage of a potential function similar to 'Revert Document' in TextEdit, or 'Versions' in LibreOffice.

I think from 10.8 onwards, auto-save was implemented. Is MuseScore capable of using this?

For 10.7 only, should a red dot appear if any score has an impending save prompt?

My impression is that it is better / safer to write as MuseScore does, because there is a much narrower window of time during which a crash could end up corrupting your file. It's a pretty standard trick, I remember learning it back in the 1980's.

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