A little bug in the saving of session before closing Mulab

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Hello Jo!

Let's assume I have a session that I want to save before I quit Mulab.

I save the session.

Then I want to quit.

Oddly, though nothing hasn't changed since the second just before... it ask me again if I want to save before quitting.
Build your life everyday as if you would live for a thousand years. Marvel at the Life everyday as if you would die tomorrow.
I'm now severely diseased since September 2018.

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It is not a bug as such, it simply shows that it is a stupid program and computer that doesn't think like humans do :)

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Basically, MuLab does not track whether or not a session has changed. It doesn't need to know that it would be a bad thing to lose your changes, if there were any, so it asks anyway.

(It's on the feature request list to "fix", I think...)

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Ive been looking into this. So basically it would be about an indication whether or not the session has changed since it was last opened or saved. If the session has changed, ask to save, else no reason to ask that. So far so good in theory. But practically it's not always possible to know whether a session has changed especially when using VST plugins. Because there is no simple or documented way the host can know whether a plugin has changed or not. I did a simple test with Massive in Reaper: Made a little project, saved it, then changed the LFO curve in Massive, and Reaper didn't know about it, so when i quit there was no question to save and i lost my edit. So in the end it will be the user who has to remember whether he changed something or not. And so in fact i think MuLab's way of doing is not that wrong/bad as it might seem at first. Unless i'm missing something. Any opinions?

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Hello Jo

I just alerted for that strange behavior (at my first impression), but I don't think that it might be a problem at all. It doesn't affect nor alter anything in the work. My opinion is that it can be kept in a list but above all not a priority to manage. It's like having to precautions instead of one, and sometimes it is rather well...
:wink:
Build your life everyday as if you would live for a thousand years. Marvel at the Life everyday as if you would die tomorrow.
I'm now severely diseased since September 2018.

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Jo,

How about a compromise. Track the changes you can track. On exit, you can simply prompt "You have unsaved changes" if you have tracked changes. If not, you can prompt "You may have untrackable changes". At least this way the user gets to know there are two different reasons for being prompted.

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That would be a lot of work (i mean: setting up a proper change tracker takes quite some work) for missing the initial goal: Avoiding such alert on quit. And i think that maybe the difference in text even won't always be noticed. And if it's noticed then it might add extra confusion. Anyway, the most important impact of such alert is the workflow interruption. So it's about: Is there an alert yes or no. We all want no such alert when the project is save. But the problem is that the VST data. In detail: VST parameters can be tracked, but it's about the non-parametric VST data like eg Massive's LFO curves. I'm sure i could find many other such examples.

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And another aspect that complicates analysis whether a project has changed or not: Imagine you have assigned a MIDI CC to a parameter. Now you save the project in a certain state with that parameter at value X. Then you tweak the MIDI CC and so the parameter is changed and your project sounds different. At least in Reaper this change is not tracked and so you can loose this change by quiting.

My conclusion: It's not that straightforward to properly decide whether the "Save project?" question should come on close/quit. I'll stay on the safe side and ask it anyway. Other DAWs may be more 'finetuned' and only ask it if they tracked a change but then there is a real risk you will loose untracked changes.

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mutools wrote:I'm sure i could find many other such examples.
Yes. One of my everyday examples is permanent: for simple scores I use the internal piano-roll, but for some very complex scores in harmony I use an external piano-roll which is a tool dedicated to the composition, RapidComposer. And it is a VST module.

If I load an old composition in RapidComposer, or if I create a brand new composition in RapidComposer, or if even I simply change just something like the place of a note in RapidComposer... it is obvious that the host is not alerted by the VST of such a change.

It is totally impossible to a host to be able to know each thing happening in a VST which is not a MIDI event (and even MIDI events can't be all clues as "changements in a composition").

It's human, isn't it? :D

A VST being seen as a subtask from the operating system, as soon as the task (Mulab for example) is closed, the subtasks (all the VSTs) are de facto closed also.

So I suggest simply to change nothing except the message itself in order to be adequate to every situations by the same redaction. Simply something like this (I've chosen each words carefully):

Beware: you have perhaps unsaved changes in Mulab or in one of your VSTs. If required, you must save yourself the changes in your VSTs before you quit Mulab.

Choose:

[Save Mulab session only and quit]   [I'm aware, quit Mulab now without any save]   [Cancel]
And to avoid any problem or litigation, the default button is... Cancel !
Build your life everyday as if you would live for a thousand years. Marvel at the Life everyday as if you would die tomorrow.
I'm now severely diseased since September 2018.

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