A bug in Musescore 2.0.0: files are not saved to the same place where they where opened from.
- open an existing mscz file from your (old) custom directory, like D:\MyScores\
- Then Press Ctrl+S - the File Save dialog is opened in the default Score directory.
Comments
As far as I know, this is not a bug butby design. We remember the last *opened* folder and last *saved* folder separately, which is very useful for a number of situations. It's also the way a number of other programs work, and perhaps the way some OS / GUI guidelines dictate that programs *should* work? Do you know of a specific guideline that forbids this and says that programs must not provide the functionality of remembering these folders separately, or must require some sort of explicit action to enable it?
I was not clear enough probably. I open a file. Make an edit. Press Save. Musescore 2.0.0 wants to save it to an other directory.
That is clear. I am saying this is by design. When you save a file for the first time, it defaults to the folder you last saved to, not the folder you last opened from. Ordinary saves simply save to the same file in the same folder of course, but the very first save of a new score - whether created from scratch or imported from 1.3 or another program - needs you to select a folder, and it defaults to the last folder you saved to. Thus, when importing a bunch of den 1.3 scores and converting to be 2.0, it is easy to keep importing from one folder hut saving to another.
So keypoint from Marc's answer is that 1.3 files will not be overwritten by 2.0. This has been a design choice. I guess we should add a small paragraph on this in the handbook at http://musescore.org/en/node/17915
This is very confusing. I know no app that works like this. I have hundreds of 1.3 files in a directory structure. We could ask the user if it is ok to save the file in the new format, but forcing to navigate to the folder manually makes no sense.
Ok. Since you make a firm stand, we'll revisit this decision. Keep you posted.
Thank you. From my, and I believe many users' aspect opening an 1.3 file in 2.0 is not importing, just continuing work.
It is treated as such because overwriting it in 2.0 won't allow you to open it in the older version. And actually, quite a few programs work like that.
Because the save-to folder is remembered, converting hundreds of files is very easy. Many people would want to keep the 1.3 and 2.0 versions separate, so the default to the new folder structure makes sense. But if you prefer to write back to the original folder, you only have to make that choice once per folder. Then each subsequent save goes to that folder again. So it is barely any inconvenience at all if you should happen to want to save back to the same folders. Whereas if the behavior were changed so that first save did *not* rememeber the last saved folder, this would inconvenience everryone else each and every time they went to save a new / imported file. I would not be in favor of such a change.
I am not talking about save folder and open folder and whatsoever. I talk about the most common sense behavior that when one opens a file in whatever version of an app, edits and saves, the expected behavior is to overwrite the file and not to open the Save as... dialog.
But it seems the dev team is quite sticked to the concept of importing an 1.3 file to 2.0, and not just open and save in the new format. I cannot see any useful reason for this behaviour, but probably it's only me. I hope that 2.0 files will be saved to where they were opened from. Which surely makes the behavior inconsistent and will make me angry at times if I will have both 1.3 and 2.0 files and will often be surprised with a Save as dialog showing the folder I saved the last 2.0 file.
I think you are misunderstanding a couple of things.
First, realize we are *only* talking about importing files from older versions or from other programs - we are *not* talking the ordinary case of a users who " opens a file in whatever version of an app, edits and saves". That case *of course* works exactly as you expect. No "Save As" dialog appears; the old file is simply replaced, no questions asked. If this didn't work correctly, it would be a bug, but it *does* work correctly. We are *only* talking about imported files - files that cannot be saved in the original format.
If the question is just whether files imported from 1.3 should be overwritten or not, well, you are free to overwrite them if you like, but very many users will *not* want to. They will want to keep their 1.3 version to guarantee they can still open it it with its original formatting. That is why a 1.3 score is treated as an import. It's a good idea most people will appreciate, but you are free to overwrite your originals if you like. Many if not most programs work similarly - refusing to overwrite versions from an older version without explicit user action.
Second, when I refer to "save folder", I mean, "the folder to which files are saved." What I am saying is, MuseScore remembers this, and it is a good thng that it does. So if I create a brand new score and then press Save", it saves to the sme folder as the last brand new score I saved. What I am telling you is once you neavigate back to the folder you loaded form and save the first of yur hundred files, MuseScore will remember that folder - the last folder saved to - and will reuse it. It will not keep returning to its default folder. So again, converting 100's of files takes exactly *one* extra total over what it would take if MuseScore did not remember the last-saved-to folder. So there is next to no inconvenience for your case. Try it and you'll see what I mean - after the very first conversion, both the "load folder" and "save fodler" will be pointing to the same location,a nd it will be *exactly* as if MuseScore was not managing them separately.
Whereas, again, if MuseScore did *not* track the "save folder" separately, it would be a huge inconvenience to those who want their 2.0 files to be stored in a different location than their 1.3 files, since they would have to reset this each and every time.
I do like the idea of remembering a save folder.
But I don't agree that the required user action when saving an 1.3 file is "save it elsewhere". While MuseScore could ask for confirmation, create a backup file, suggest saving with other name etc.
An other related issue: not just the folder is set to the default (the "save" folder), but also the file name is set to the title of the piece and not the original filename.
To me, the way MS works now is best. I do not want my 1.3 files overwritten by 2 and then find that there is a problem that requires me to use 1.3
I know that the nightlies are better and better, but the way MS works now if by far preferable to me.
Ultimately, I could see "1.3 imports" being somehow treated as a third class of score - not the same as ordinary 2.0 scores which are simply re-saved, but also not the same as new files or imports from other sources that are treated as essentially new. But defining exactly how they should be treated that would serve the needs of both those who plan to re-save into the same folders anyhow and those who may prefer saving into a new folder structure (the case for which the current behavior is optimal) is tricky, and perhaps ultimately not really doable other than making it be a program preference.