Saving, opening and recovering

A song is saved as a .lineup file: its patterns and notes, the chord sheet, the band and its style, the song form, the tempo, the mixer, and the instrument of every channel. One file holds the whole song.

The File menu

The Import and Export items are in Opening MIDI files and recordings and Exporting.

The window’s title names the song, with a * after it while it has changes that are not saved. Ctrl+Z back to where it was saved takes the star away again. A new song is Untitled until you save it, and the first Save asks where, as Save as… does. The file always gets the .lineup ending, even when you leave it out.

A song that no longer opens, because it was moved or deleted, drops out of Open recent when you click it.

Demos are read-only

A demo says (demo, read-only) in the title. Change it as much as you like, but Save asks for a new file: the demo itself stays as it was, and your version is a song of your own from then on.

Before your changes are lost

When an action would close a song with unsaved changes (New, Open…, a demo, or closing the window), Ferrous Lineup asks Save changes? first:

• Save saves the song and goes on;
• Don’t save throws the changes away and goes on;
• Cancel goes back to the song as it is.

The style editor asks the same about a style, with Save style, Don’t save style and Cancel. Closing the window while an export is running asks whether to Stop it and quit or Keep exporting.

Opening files in other ways

• Drop a file on the window from your file manager. A .lineup file opens; a MIDI file, a text chord sheet or a recording (MP3, FLAC, Ogg, or a WAV longer than ten seconds) is imported. Drop one at a time: with several, none is opened. A shorter WAV file is a sound: it becomes a channel that plays it, or, dropped on a channel of the rack, that channel’s sound (see The channel rack).
• Open a file with Ferrous Lineup from your file manager, or give it to the program on the command line, as in ferrous-lineup song.lineup. A .lineup file opens, a MIDI file is imported, a text file is imported as a chord sheet, and a sound file is imported as a recording.

Recovering unsaved work

While a song has unsaved changes, Ferrous Lineup keeps a copy of it on the side, brought up to date within about half a minute of each change, even if you then leave the app alone. The copy is not your file, which only Save changes, and it is removed once the song is saved or the app closes normally.

If the computer crashes or the app is closed without the chance to ask, the next start offers the copy back:

Recover it opens the song as it was, still unsaved: save it to keep it. Discard it throws the copy away. Each window keeps its own copy, so when two were open, both are offered.

The copies live in Ferrous Lineup’s data folder, in recovery:

The SoundFont downloaded in Sounds lives in the same folder, in soundfonts.

Sharing a song

A .lineup file opens on Linux, macOS and Windows alike. What it doesn’t hold are the sound files it uses: a WAV played by a channel, or an imported recording, stays where it was, and the song only says where. To give someone a song that uses them, send the sound files too, and put them back on the channels on the other computer.

A song made only with things an older version of Ferrous Lineup knows is saved so that the older version opens it too. A song that uses something newer tells the older version that it was made by a newer one, instead of opening with parts missing.