Palettes - Questions
(1) When you right click on the "Palettes tab" you get a "single palette" option. What does this mean?
(2) The section on palettes is not fully explained in the manual. This resulted in my confusing "palette" with "workspace". It is an easy mistake to make given that the Tab at the top says "palettes".
So for the record, a palette is an individual option listed under the tag "palettes". A "workspace" is the whole collection of palettes under the tag "palettes."
However, there does not seem to be ANY way to save a workspace. Why would a user want to save individual palettes when is much easier and more efficient to save a workspace. Have I misunderstood something here?
Comments
1) It means only a single palette can be open at once - opening one palette will automatically close whatever other palette might already be open.
2) The terminology is indeed unclear at best, inconsistent at worst. I would put it this way:
The "Palette" (with capital "P") window consists of a number of individual palettes (lower case "p"). The configuration of which individual palettes are contained in your Palette window - as well as the contents of those individual palettes - is what consistutes a Workspace.
There is no need to save Workspaces. They are saved automatically, just like Preference settings. The act of creating or modifying a workspace automatically saves it, or at least, triggers a save on successful close.
So if workspaces are automatically saved with the program what is the point of the user saving individual palettes?
And If the program crashes while you are setting up your workspace you may lose all the changes you have made to it. This happened to me a few hours ago and I had to start again. With computers always expect the unexpected!
And when the user needs to reinstall his/her OS and MuseScore, s/he will have to reinstall every little palette. Better to reload the original workspace file.
In reply to So if workspaces are by geetar
Saving a palette makes sense to transport that to a different PC or keep it across factory resets
In reply to So if workspaces are by geetar
Another use case for saving palettes individually is to allow a single palette to be shared between workspaces. Or, if an upgrade to MuseScore changes the contents of the palettes and you want to pick up those defaults but also add just the new palettes you created.
The worksapces will survive a reinstallation of MuseScore, but not of the OS obviously, or moving from one computer to another. The workspaces are just XML files you can copy yourself, although they are in an OS-specific location and not necessarily easy to find. If you do extensive worksapce customization, you probably want to look up the location of the workspace fiels and back them up yourself. But yes, the ability to explicitly save a workspace would save the trouble of finding them.
And FWIW, I do expect the unexpected, which is why I always shut down MuseScore after making significant changes to my workspace, preferences, window layout, or anything else I worry won't be preserved if the computer of program crashes. That's why i don't actually know if worksapces are written immediately or not :-)
I must have done something wrong in setting up a palette. Before, I could have several palettes open at once and now I can only have one. I don't know what I did. I think I made a wrokspace. But this situation exists for Basic and Advanced. Can I delete a workspace?
In reply to I must have done something by Joe H
There is an option "Single palette" you access by right clicking the title bar of the Palettes window to control whether opening one palette closes another or not.
You can delete workspaces in Edit / Workspaces.