Yeah, yesterday I played with MuseScore 3.6 a little bit — a lot of fun![0]
As for me, MuseScore now took 2nd place (just after Blender, which keep 1st place) on my Top FLOSS software projects lists.
P.S. The only issue, as for me, that MuseScore 4[1] (WIP) UI would be switched to QML (JavaScript). I tried its latest nightly builds — it looks like common Electron apps & for me its UI/UX looks horrible.
I was quite skeptical when you said "2nd place, after Blender".
That was 20 minutes before. I just finished writing down a full score, including lyrics, without ever using this before. This is amazing software, both in looks and usability. I'm just sad I didn't discover this earlier.
> what makes you prefer SolveSpace to FreeCAD or programmatic cad like CadQuery?
I prefer GUI apps over CLI/scripting.
SolveSpace is my main 2D/3D CAD since SolveSpace 2.0 became[0] FLOSS. (previously used KOMPAS-3D, but it is proprietary)
Now I'm QA (tester) & i18n (localization) contributor to the SolveSpace development for 6 years now, so you may ask me anything about it.
Itself I'm a teacher of design and technology, with a bachelor degree in technical drawing & CGI + master degree in PM, so really like to take part in FLOSS development as UI/UX QA & PM, see my profile on GitHub[1]
In last 20 years for curious reasons also I use OpenSCAD QCAD/LibreCAD, FreeCAD and a lot of other FLOSS CAx & GIS apps from-time-to-time (mostly for testing & bug reporting).
> What do you use it for?
For all CAD-related works (see my #DailySolveSpace[1] resources): solid 3D modeling & producing 2D drawings, simple CAE analyzing, etc.
JFTR, I'm moderator of /r/SolveSpace sub on Reddit too.
Describing QML as "Javascript" is not necessarily all that useful. Yes, you can use JS in QML, but that doesn't mean it's actually done by the app in meaningful amounts, or has a meaningful performance impact. And the Musescore devs, from what I've seen, know what they are doing.
I'm a bit worried about performance with QML since already the UI is a bit slow (not much, but noticeable) and switching to JavaScript might negatively impact that. We'll see.
Of course, for latest PC with powerful GPU, 16+ cores CPU & 16GB+ of RAM performance may be increased...
But, as I has an 10 y/o laptop with integrated, any heavy JavaScript GUI apps (based on QML/Electron) just slowed down performance instead of increasing, in comparison to Qt-based or native GUI apps.
QML is commonly used on <1 GHz embedded devices. Equating QML to bad Electron examples doesn't make sense. (Although Electron/Chromium also have a large range depending on how they are used, in my experience they have a way harder time scaling down to smaller devices)
> QML is commonly used on <1 GHz embedded devices.
Yes, I know as an owner of Symbian 9.x device ;)
But, here I literally means that actual QML coding style stuck to requirement of modern GPU with OpenGL 2.x (GL ES 2.x) even OpenGL 3/4 support.
My laptop has integrated GPU mostly limited to OpenGL 1.x, so all those CSS/QSS animations, which depends on higher OpenGL features, just blows my CPU/GPU into flame.
> QML is commonly used on <1 GHz embedded devices.
1ghz embedded devices with semi-good GPUs*
e.g. the GPU in a Pi 3 blows some older intel GMA chips out of the water, and those are still quite present "out there". Even a 4ghz pentium 4 with such a GPU will feel slower to the user than a 800mhz Pi (which in itself, is not what I'd call enjoyable to use).
Was thinking more the various Vivante things like you get with the imx6 variants - but they also do support the needed OpenGL ES versions. Pis are weird outliers in various ways (and Pi 3 is >1Ghz).
Your 10yo GPU can blit and scroll pixels faster than your CPU, which can deal with layouts and other things in the meantime. Using GPU by itself is not slowing down your apps.
If the app is badly optimised it's going to be slow regardless of the rendering method.
