Automatic saving and backup |
Automatic saving [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] When you create a score in Pizzicato, you need to save it on
the hard disk once it is finished or when you temporarily want to
stop working. This saving is done via the File, Save
menu or if your score did not receive a name yet, File,
Save as... This last menu lets you specify the location and
the name used to save the file. It is also useful to save it regularly to avoid the loss of
your work if the computer suddenly blocks, due to Pizzicato
itself, to Windows or Mac, to a simple power break or due to a
wrong manipulation you did. Pizzicato provides a regular autosaving in order to preserve
your work. It is indeed very upsetting to work for hours on a
document and then realize that it is lost. Some basic precautions
let you avoid such a situation. Select the Options, Automatic
save and security backups... menu. The following dialog box
appears: By default, the automatic saving is activated and occurs after
10 minutes of work on a document. You must have modified your
document since its last saving for this to happen. At the first
modification of a document, Pizzicato starts a timer and as soon
as it comes to 10 minutes, it does an automatic saving. It is
also necessary for the document to have been assigned a name,
otherwise the saving will not be automatically executed. When you
start a new score, give it a name and a location without waiting.
Pizzicato will then be able to save it automatically every 10
minutes (or another duration if you modify its value in the above
dialog box). Notice that the automatic saving will never be done
when Pizzicato plays a score. Pizzicato will wait up to the end
of the play to save the score. The next check box requires Pizzicato to check the integrity
of a file after it has been saved. It is checked by default.
After saving a file, Pizzicato tries to read it again to make
sure that the file is coherent and that it can be read back later
without problems. In case of a reading error, Pizzicato warns you
so that you can try to save it under another name if there is a
problem. We highly advise you to keep this automatic saving option on
because it will avoid the loss of a document in most cases. Notice that this automatic saving feature is different than
the one you will find in the document manager, because in the
case of the document manager, Pizzicato simply does not ask you
to save a document when you close a document or exit Pizzicato,
but it does not save it regularly. Warning: the Pizzicato examples, libraries and template
files are not automatically saved when modified. This is to avoid
losing an original document simply because you opened it and
modified it to make some tests. If needed, you must explicitly
save them. It is the case for all documents included in the DataEN
folder of the Pizzicato directory. It is also the case for
security backups: they are not active in this folder. Automatic backups [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] In addition of a regular saving, Pizzicato also provides
safety backups. The principle is to keep several versions of a
document in order to be able to go back to a previous version if
necessary. If there is a serious problem, you will thus find an
older copy and will not lose the full score. Pizzicato may manage up to 5 safety copies of the same
document. By default, two copies are active: one after 15 minutes
of work and the other after one hour. The safety copies are done
when the document is saved. For each activated copy, Pizzicato
maintains a timer. Once the time limit is reached, Pizzicato
saves your document under a slightly modified name (it adds the
suffix "- bck1", "bck2",... to the original
document name). Here is what occurs: Two safety copies are enough for little and medium works. If
you work on a very large document (an orchestral score which will
take weeks of work), we advise you to pass to 3, 4 even 5 copies.
You can modify the suggested durations as you want. Practically,
a safety backup is replaced by a more recent one as soon as the
timer value is reached. The backup copies are saved by default in the Pizzicato Backups
subdirectory. You may change this directory by clicking on the Select...
button. If you disable the Place the backup copies in the
following directory check box, the copies will be saved in
the same directory than the original document. Restoring a backup [Beginner] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] The automatic saving function and the safety backups are
useful only to avoid a loss of document. It is like a fire
insurance: in most cases it is useless. But when a problem
occurs, to have it is much better! The purpose of this section is
to answer to the question: what do you do if Pizzicato tells you
he cannot open your so precious score or if the document has an
abnormal behavior despite all the precautions taken. If your document is already opened and has problems, you can
use the File, Revert to... menu. The safety backups 1 to
5 (only if they exist) are available through this menu. A dialog
box requires confirmation and the original document is then
replaced by the selected safety backup. If your document produces an error at the opening, try to open
the ones having the same name with their safety suffix. Then we
advise you to modify the name of this backup file by calling the File,
Save as... menu and give it the name of the original
document by removing the suffix. Everything is then as before. In the File, Revert to menu, you will also
find The last version saved. You can use it to reload
the current document by ignoring the modifications done until the
last save.