Better M4 compatibility with M3 please

• Feb 22, 2023 - 09:57

I have been a user of v3 for a few years and have encouraged others in our choir to use it. Now most do. I have invested a lot of time in setting up v3 to suit my needs, and learning how to use it to add / edit / format scores. It works very well for me (I am not a professional musician).

I downloaded v4, spent 10 minutes trying to find how to do simple things, and realised v4 is so completely different to v3 that it is like a new program. I do not want to spend more hours learning a new program, which is fine because I can continue to use v3. However, our new choir director wants to use Musescore and he says he cannot download v3 any longer; only v4 is available. Files he creates are in v4 format which cannot be read by v3. There appears to be no way to save 'down' to a v3 file. I know that an xml file can be used as an intermediary but that often introduces formatting quirks which take more time to fix.

All this is very frustrating.
- Is it possible to make v3 available to download again?
- Is it possible to allow v4 files to be downloaded in v3 readable format?

I'm sure v4 is a great program, but there are many people for whom this change is unnecessary. Please accommodate us!

Comments

Jojo-Schmitz

• Feb 22, 2023 - 10:02

Mu3 downloads have never been disabled, see https://musescore.org/en/download#Older-and-unsupported-versions
The way back from Mu4 scores to Mu3 is via MusicXML

MichaelGood

• Feb 22, 2023 - 11:03

Thank you. I will point our director towards the unsupported versions space

Marc Sabatella

• Feb 22, 2023 - 15:07

FWIW, the differences are mostly cosmetic, and the improvements pretty tremendous. It's definitely worth the few minutes it would take to familiarize yourself with the differences. No reason your choir director or other members should be forced to give up the advantages of MuseScore 4.

MichaelGood

• Feb 23, 2023 - 09:52

Thank you. I've spent a couple of hours so far and see that there are indeed a lot of similarities. However there remain several useful things that I cannot find how to replicate, and it will take more time to become familiar with the changes. I have not yet found anything in v4 that I need or want, or that improves this user's experience.