Instruction manual - Pizzicato 3.6.2 EN335 - Revision of 2013/05/29

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Automatic saving and backup

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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:

  • You start a new document and you directly give it a name and a location on the hard disk by selecting the File, Save as... menu.
  • You work with the document.
  • Regularly (by default every 10 minutes), Pizzicato saves your document under the given name. While working, the timers associated to the safety backups are increased and when a timer reaches its limit, Pizzicato creates a safety backup with the corresponding suffixand resets the timer to zero.

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.

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Beginner

Professional

Notation

Composition Light

Composition Pro

Drums and Percussion

Guitar

Choir

Keyboard

Soloist