Hi Brian,
We seem to have conflated a couple of problems here, and I think it's my fault for not being clear enough (and for not changing Chris Smith's original header, which I leave here only for the sake of continuity). I understand that the file-overwrite bug is relatively rare and difficult to reproduce, thus, difficult to solve. (After all, it's only happened to me once.) However, when it *does* happen, the consequences of the bug are so severe (total data loss) that I would hope that if you do uncover any new leads, Coda will devote its full attention to solving the problem. If it happens again I will try to give you detailed information about exactly what I was doing when the problem occurred.
On the other hand, there is the other bug you mentioned, "the same ID number taking over
two or more text blocks, or even expressions since Expressions are now somewhat text blocks in 2004 because they are multi-font." I'm assuming this *has* been successfully reproduced in house, because it happens all the time, and I can only hope that more than two people have bothered to report it! This bug, while occasionally bothersome in Fin2002 and Fin2003, has become an absolute meance in Finale 2004 and, and as I said, I really hope you are devoting the time and resources to make sure it gets fixed.
Meanwhile, there is a *third* bug that makes both of the above problems worse -- the fact that Finale will prompt you to save changes even when no changes have been made. Here, I *can* tell you exactly how to reproduce the problem.
Launch Finale.
In Program Options -> Save, tell Finale to autosave files every 1 minute.
Turn (or leave) "Automatic Music Spacing" and "Automatic Update Layout" off.
Create a new, blank document.
Save the document and give it a title (for instance, "Test 1.mus").
Do not make any further changes to the document.
Wait for the autosave.
After the autosave is complete, close "Test 1.mus"
Finale will ask you if you want to save changes before closing. There is nothing in the Undo/Redo list. Nothing in the file has changed. It's still completely blank. It's still identical to the file you saved as "Test 1.mus". Finale should only prompt you to save changes if there any changes to save.
As I said, this bug would be merely an annoyance if it didn't make it very easy to accidentally save unwanted changes created by the text block ID bug (which also leaves no trace in the Undo/Redo list).
Hope this helps clarify things,
- Darcy
-----
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn NY
On 10 Jun 2004, at 05:13 PM, MacSupport wrote:
Hello,
I am not sure what more we can do about this right now, as I cannot reproduce it, and do not have definitive steps to be able to try and track it down. There are thousands of other people using Finale, and there have been two people reporting it. Our other beta testers and testing in-house have not produced any bugs that I can find right now in our bug database regarding this file-overwrite anomoly.
I hope this helps!
Brian Customer Support Representative MakeMusic!, Inc.
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Introducing Finale 2004. See the new features and purchase for Macintosh (OS 9 and OS X) and Windows at http://www.finalemusic.com/
-----Original Message----- From: Darcy James Argue [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 2:48 PM To: MacSupport Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Finale] That darned file-overwrite bug FinMac 2003
Hi Brian,
First -- THANK YOU for confirming that you are aware of the text block/staff name/expressions being overwritten. Hopefully this is something that will be fixed soon.
Next -- I do not have automatic update layout or automatic music spacing or anything else "automatic" checked. However, I can confirm that Finale will *always* ask me to save changes to a document that has been sitting open in the background while I work on another document, even when no actual changes have been made and nothing shows up in the undo/redo lists.
This has been the case for some time. Before, it was just an annoyance
-- all it meant was an extra prompt to save "changes" even when there were no changes to be saved. However, in combination with the text
block etc. ID number bug, it becomes a real problem, as it becomes very
easy to unwittingly save a file that has been afflicted with this bug.
- Darcy
-----
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn NY
On 08 Jun 2004, at 03:09 PM, MacSupport wrote:
Hello,
If you have automatic update layout or automatic music spacing checked while opening the document, you have already made a change to the document, and therefore Finale asks if you wish to save changes. I do know there are bugs written up about the staff names, text blocks, etc being overwritten. This has to do with the same ID number taking over two or more text blocks, or even expressions since Expressions are now somewhat text blocks in 2004 because they are multi-font.
I hope this helps!
Brian Customer Support Representative MakeMusic!, Inc.
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Introducing Finale 2004. See the new features and purchase for Macintosh (OS 9 and OS X) and Windows at http://www.finalemusic.com/
-----Original Message----- From: Darcy James Argue [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2004 4:25 PM To: MacSupport Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Finale] That darned file-overwrite bug FinMac 2003
Hi Brian,
Hmm. Well I have not had any other users report this.
Christopher Smith has reported this as well -- in fact, my original email quoted his bug report.
It is hard to try and test this without any reproduceable steps, and I
am not able to reproduce it randomly when I have several files open
(for a limited time, obviously I do not spend my whole day just
sitting in front of Finale). Are there any more specific steps you can
give a clue to the behavior?
I'm afraid not. The problem will the file name getting overwritten
when multiple files are open is (thankfully) more rare than the problem
where text blocks, staff names, expressions, etc., get overwritten
(surely you can reproduce *that*) -- but it does exist and I suspect
the two problems might be somehow related.
Again, I wish I could be more helpful. This bug is rare, but
devastating. All I can suggest is that you address the greater problem
of unwanted changes bleeding into to currently open documents besides
the one you're working on. You might also look at how Finale tracks
changes to files -- often, Finale will prompt you to "save changes"
when no changes have been made (i.e., there's nothing in the Undo/Redo
lists).
Regards,
- Darcy
-----Original Message----- From: Darcy James Argue [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 3:52 PM To: MacSupport Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Finale] That darned file-overwrite bug FinMac 2003
Hi Brian,
I wish I could. All I can tell you is that whenever you have multiple
documents open simultaneously, there is a risk that one file will
inherit the name of another currently open file -- without the name in
the menubar changing to reflect this! But when you save the file, it
will save with the new name, overwriting the other file, which will be
lost forever.
That's bad.
- Darcy
-----
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn NY
On 27 May 2004, at 04:46 PM, MacSupport wrote:
Hello,
Could you please provide some specific steps or a list of possible steps that might cause me to reproduce this issue?
I hope this helps!
Brian Customer Support Representative MakeMusic!, Inc.
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Introducing Finale 2004. See the new features and purchase for Macintosh (OS 9 and OS X) and Windows at http://www.finalemusic.com/
-----Original Message----- From: Darcy James Argue [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 11:53 AM To: MacSupport Subject: Re: [Finale] That darned file-overwrite bug FinMac 2003
Hi Brian,
The problem is not limited to staff names or text blocks -- as Chris
Smith and I describe below, it also happens to *FILE NAMES*, which is
(to quote James Brown) superbad, since that results in one file
overwriting another without warning.
Regards,
- Darcy
-----
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn NY
On 17 May 2004, at 05:24 PM, MacSupport wrote:
Hello,
Yes I think this is an issue when two text blocks in two different
files obtain the SAME identification number.
I have not heard any other comments about this, but it seems related
only specifically to staff names or text blocks, so editing in
speedy
entry for example does not produce this issue.
I hope this helps!
Brian Technical Support Representative MakeMusic!, Inc. Coda Music Technologies
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your reply.
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our Technical Support:
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Introducing Finale 2004. See the new features and purchase for Macintosh (OS 9 and OS X) and Windows at <http://www.finalemusic.com/finale/f2k4/>
-----Original Message----- From: Darcy James Argue [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 1:41 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: MacSupport; Christopher BJ Smith Subject: Re: [Finale] That darned file-overwrite bug FinMac 2003
Hi Chris,
If you switch the file names around, this is pretty much what
happened
to me -- my "Big 1" was overwritten by "Small 2." Fortunately, I
noticed the problem quickly and had a recent backup. However, I was
using Fin2004 -- I didn't realize the problem existed in previous
versions. So I guess that answers your question about whether this
problem has been fixed. [sigh]
Again, I think this might be related to the problem where when you
make
a change to a text block (or staff name, or pretty much any text
element) in one open document, Finale goes and applies that change
to
*all* open documents. I suspect that, in this case, it's doing that
with the *filename*. [sigh] I think this bug might be a byproduct
of
the feature which allows you to have plugins apply to "all open
documents." (Maybe Coda could introduce a toggle to turn that off?
I'd gladly give up that feature if it meant I didn't have to worry
about changes in one document bleeding into all the other open
documents.)
At any rate, these are both devastating bugs (or instances of the
same
bug -- whatever). I know this is difficult to reproduce and
therefore
difficult to fix, but boy does it ever need fixing. Meanwhile, it's
just not safe to have more than one Finale file open at once. [sigh]
- Darcy
-----
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn NY
On 03 May 2004, at 02:26 PM, Christopher BJ Smith wrote:
Hi all,
I remember reading a while back about how Finale sometimes overwrites a file when more than one file is open. I seem to have been bitten by this bug, but I can't reconstruct what I did, as an hour passed before I noticed it. What I think happened is this:
I had a score ("Big 1") open I was working on.
I opened another file ("Small 2"), made a small edit, printed it, and closed it.
Went back to working on my (still open) "Big 1" score. The next time I saved it, it saved under the name and location of the OTHER file, overwriting it.
When I later went to open "Small 2", I got my completed "Big 1" score instead. The file saved under the name "Big 1" was the version I last saved just before I opened the "Small 2" score at around noon, and so was incomplete.
Small 2 is gone, gone, gone. When I look to see if I can undo what I did in the file called Small 1 (to go back to before the file was overwritten), the Undo lists are greyed out.
Is this comparable to what others have observed? I don't use Fin2004 much yet, so I don't know whether this bug is still around, but it is definitely there in FinMac2003.
Christopher _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
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