Showing backup files as default is confusing
When you select open a score in MuseScore you get a list of all supported file types including backup files. This causes confusion for some people. I would suggest that the default list of scores to open not include backup files, especially since alphabetically (at leas on Windows) the backup files are listed first.
Comments
As soon as MuseScore 3.5 of later creates them, they'd be stashed a way in a hidden .mscbackup folder, so you won't see them anymore. What you do see now is pre-3.5 backup scores, an endangered species ;-)
In reply to As soon as MuseScore 3.5 of… by Jojo-Schmitz
People are still finding the backup rather than primary files as can be seen in various discussion. It's not a huge problem but it does cause confusion.
People don't delete all of there backups so all of there backups from 3.0 - 3.4.2 are still in the same folder scores are saved in by default. I suspect that backups of scores created in pre-3.5 versions exist in different forms in the main folder and the backup folder, so the confusion will be doubled in those cases.
In reply to People are still finding the… by mike320
Indeed, 3.5 doesn't clean out those pre-3.5 backup files as far as I can tell.
Maybe it should, like moving them all into that .mscbackup folder
In reply to Indeed. 3.5 doesn't clean… by Jojo-Schmitz
I would probably favor that, unless someone came up with a good reason not to.
Although I also don't understand why we show backup files at all now.
In reply to I would probably favor that,… by Marc Sabatella
Because we can open them now, we couldn't before 3.5
In reply to Because we can open them now… by Jojo-Schmitz
Not convinced that's a good reason to show them unless the user asks for hidden files to be displayed. Maybe we could make the "new" backup files (the ones in the hidden folder) not be hidden, so they display but continue to not show the "old" ones which are hidden. And/or, move them automatically.
The real point is this, we went through the trouble of hiding backups from the user in a subdirectory but made it too easy to find them from within the program. Even all of the pre-3.5 backups were deleted by the user, they still have the potential to stumble across the backups while navigating and seeing the backup files with a slightly different MuseScore icon next to them.
In reply to The real point is this, we… by mike320
And to add to the mess MuseScore doesn't even open them on double-click. See https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/6532, which tries to fix that