Add some plugins to Musescore code

• Jul 18, 2019 - 21:02

Hi. Your work in Musescore has been wonderful. It has been so improved in score writing and playback that it can be used all by itself to compose and record high quality music. There are many interesting plugins in the repository. But when Musescore entered 2.x and 3.x series plugins were broken and developers had to write them again. If they didn't that plugins would be lost. Then it will be very nice if Musescore developers add some plugins to the software code, then they can be preserved in newer versions. Here are some unique examples that perform important tasks and deserve to be preserved:
https://musescore.org/en/project/check-harmony-rules
https://musescore.org/en/project/tunings-and-temperaments (and its fork: https://musescore.org/en/project/modal-tuning)
Thank you.

Comments

• Jul 20, 2019 - 18:27

After changing to Musescore 3 I read the page you mentioned and tried to adapt some codes to make some plugins work. But since my programming knowledge is very limited I could not succeed and had to stop writing pieces that depended on that plugins until the plugin developers created a version for 3.x. This why I made this request. If it's not too complicated for the Musescore team would you be able to add to the main code, at least the more complex plugins?

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• Jul 20, 2019 - 23:16

The more complex plugins are specifically the ones that don't make sense to try to incorporate into MuseScore. The focus should remain on notation, and secondarily on playback, not on AI or other more esoteric features.

There are a handful of plugins that do make sense to incorporate into the program, these include courtesy accidentals and tempo changes. But they would need to be done from scratch so make them dynamic, not just commands you run once.

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• Jul 21, 2019 - 02:45

That's possible, but to me it's kind of an odd thing for a program to do itself - I can't really think of other programs that do this. On the other hand, this is one of the plugins that to me does make sense to include with the program, because it's of pretty general interest. Still as a plugin, but one you wouldn't need to download at least. Is that the reason you don't like having it as a pluign?

It's likely the whole process of installing plugins will become easier in a future release.

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• Jul 21, 2019 - 04:07

Once you know how to add a plugin, and you know the plugin exists, I guess it doesn't make a difference.
Mainly for discoverability.
I didn't even know this batch .pdf existed, until a few weeks ago.
And it has been very helpful.
I am sure there are a small minority of users (which is still a lot of people) who don't know about useful plugins that exist.

But this batch .pdf can save so much time, that yeah you should include it with the main program. Its one thing to not know about a plugin that serves a cosmetic, minor, or very esoteric purpose, its another to not know about a broadly used plugin that can save hours of time.

Best of luck.

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• Jul 21, 2019 - 04:15

Can you describe your use case in which you find yourself using this? I think for the majority of people, this is something that would be needed very seldom. For those few who have special unusual workflow that make it useful, that's why plugins exist, and that's why they aren't all there by default, because there are dozens of different unusual workflows each with its plugin, and having them all there by default would make things cluttered and hard to maintain.

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• Jul 21, 2019 - 16:12

I constantly 'tweak' my notation, and I have a lot of songs.
So I don't have to worry about what songs I tweaked. I can just run another batch .pdf at the end of day, knowing they will all be up to date.
Creating all the .pdf's at the same time ensures everything is the exact same as my .mcsz files.

Anyone who has more than 5 songs will benefit from 'batching' the .pdfs
And it is a very unique feature. Sibelius, Finale, LilyPond no one has it.

A lot of people would use it, and a lot of time could be saved.

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• Jul 21, 2019 - 16:19

I guess most people probably export as they go, which is why we don't hear a lot of requests for this feature.

Anyhow, as I said, everyone has their own unique workflow, but we can't very well include every plugin for every feature that a handful of people use a lot. Features get included when there is evidence that there is widespread need. This would be a decent candidate if there start being a lot more requests. Feel free to start a new discussion specifically devoted to that topic to see if you can drum up more interest.

Meanwhile, for those who would benefit from it, the plugin is available. Same for those who benefit from harp diagrams or any of the others.

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• Jul 26, 2019 - 02:50

Ok. It's far better when a feature works automatically than when we have to run it manually. And as I see in this discussion each one really have its own preferences.
Checking harmony rules may look like AI. Well, for those who are intermediate composers like me it's very useful. I check each counterpoint I write several times. :) Maybe if someday I become as good as a baroque composer I won't need it anymore. :)
But, please, take into consideration some needs that may be more widespread.
For example, for those who work with early music or eastern music, re-tuning is a norm. We need it all the time. In Arabic music we even need to change the tuning at different sections of the same score. And most times we need to save and load customized tunings. There are thousand of historic temperaments that were used before 19th century. It would be a very nice implementation for many users.

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