MagicScore School (notation) - not fully portable, but...

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Onesimus Prime · #1 Post by **Onesimus Prime** » Fri Oct 24, 2008 1:55 pm

Hey y'all!
Don't know how many of you have ever heard of the site Giveaway of the Day (abbreviated GOTD or GAOTD), but today (10/24/08 ) their giveaway is MagicScore School, a notation program: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/magicscore-school-5355/

The program's website is here, and the "School" version (the lowest level) is usually about $30, apparently. But today only, it's free from GOTD.

The catch is that you've got to install it today. Or at least a part of it. What you do is download the .zip file from GOTD and unzip it. Inside, today, are three files (the .zip contents vary by the program offered). The important, time-critical one is Activate.exe.
This is the one you'll want to RegShot (or RegFromApp, as long as you save both the before- and after-states, but I'd probably recommend RegShot for this?). It will "call home" - just a warning. But that's actually what it's meant to do - verify you're installing it on the right day.

So, summary so far - the important thing is to run Activate.exe today (10/24/08 ) and capture the registry changes. As of the time of this post, there's about 9 hours left to do so... I start work in 10 minutes, so I'll try to post the next steps later tonight or tomorrow. You know the time-critical part now...

I've made a .bat launcher (simple, compared to the magic most of you guys do!) with some extra workarounds to get it to run under a limited Vista account. I'll post more on that later, maybe even upload my launcher someplace. Probably (hopefully) some of you could even improve upon it...

Oh, and the license says:
"3. Once registered, the user is granted a non-exclusive license to use MagicScore on one computer (i.e. a single cpu), for any legal purpose, at a time. The registered MagicScore software may not be rented or leased." (emphasis added) To me, the license seems to allow for portable use of the program...

If you don't run Activate.exe today and miss out on registering this program, I'm sorry, but I will not give you the registration info. I hope nobody else does either. Both GOTD and the authors of this software are doing something cool, and piracy doesn't seem like such a nice thank-you. It's $30; if you missed the free, it's not dirt cheap but it's not so bad either.

So yeah, more later...

Local · #2 Post by **Local** » Fri Oct 24, 2008 3:09 pm

Boy did you pick the wrong day to mention GOTD.

I've been bitching about them all day because todays giveaway is only a trial.

If you managed to get the program registered I'd love to know how.
(Before the giveaway is over obviously)
I've captured all the changes made by the Activation and found nothing but internet proxy alterations and window mountpoints.

On the plus side, 90% of the games they give away on the weekend are portable

Onesimus Prime · #3 Post by **Onesimus Prime** » Fri Oct 24, 2008 8:25 pm

Local,
I hope you get this in time...

There are three registry changes made by Activate.exe (that I saw). They look like "internet proxy alterations and window mountpoints," but I'm 99% sure they're not. They're actually just really obfuscated/sneaky/kinda mean places to hide the registration info for the program.

I had the same confusion when I installed mine; I thought it was still a demo too. But then, after some playing, I figured out that if it's really a demo, it'll give the number of remaining days (out of 30) right in the title bar. So even though it looked a lot like a demo, I'm pretty sure mine wasn't. Post #68 in the reviews @ GOTD said, "If you check the ABOUT selection under the help menu, it says it is registered to GAOTD. No need to use the REGISTER selection." This was my experience too. The "Register" section was actually misleading, b/c it made me think it wasn't registered when it actually seems to have been.

Incidentally, the program's rating there at GOTD is 72% "thumbs up". I'm pretty new to GOTD, but that definitely seems like one of the higher ratings I've seen there (sad but true).

Hope all that helps...just wanted to try and answer this question within GOTD's timeframe.

Onesimus Prime · #4 Post by **Onesimus Prime** » Fri Oct 24, 2008 10:06 pm

Grr...the forum log-out ate my post. Anyway,

Like I said before, MagicScore School is not quite portable, but mostly. It writes program registration info to the registry in 3-4 places, but any and all settings seem to be written to a "ProgramSetting.ini" file in the application's directory.

One problem for portable notation software is that it needs special fonts to display the musical notes and symbols. And fonts need Admin rights to be installed. So we're not going to install them.

Wraithdu recently (as in, less than a month ago!) made an NSIS app to portably use fonts. That's what I used to accomplish this part. More later (probably tomorrow or so)...

I really wish I remembered the rest of what I was going to post...

SlowLearner · #5 Post by **SlowLearner** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 1:28 am

Hi

You may be interest to hear that GAOTD have posted "StarBurner" again.

When you install this - it has an option to create a portable version.

Download from here:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/shark-star-burn-10/

Thanks

SlowLearner

Local · #6 Post by **Local** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 6:37 am

Cheers for the update Onesimus.

I gave the whole thing a miss anyway.
When I had installed the prog I still had "Trial" in the title bar that had a few thousand days left on it.
Also whenever I started it up it told me I had 30 days left of trial.

Still never mind.
If the reg entries from the activation were for the program I don't think I want it on my system.
Too sneaky.

Besides, I "aquired" a full copy to test out afterwards.
I reckon that as they were giving MagicScore away for free yesterday and I got this yesterday it can't be illegal, can it?

Nice news sowlearner.
I usually hate Starburn but I'm gonna try the portable one now.

Who thinks we should have a section to post GOTD offers that are portable on here?
The first thing I do is test their portability, I can't be the only one.

Cornflower · #7 Post by **Cornflower** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 10:44 am

I don't consider anything from GOTD portable, and their license suggests that it is only for the computer where it is installed on during that 24-hour period.

That said, I picked up MagicScore 6 months ago because my wife is a church musician without funds, and no freeware software was doing what this one can do by far, and yesterday, she downloaded it onto her computer knowing that it is not portable.

Onesimus Prime · #8 Post by **Onesimus Prime** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 11:19 am

Even if you don't consider it portable coming from GOTD, one could still "portable-ize" the regularly bought version (assuming it works the same, etc.)

I could be missing what you're talking about in GOTD's license, but I did technically install it during the Giveaway period. And I'm not "sharing" or giving away my registration info.

As SlowLearner said, today's Giveaway (10/24/08 - StarBurn) has a portable version as an option at install, so apparently GOTD and StarBurn didn't feel like (an intentional) portable violated GOTD's license.

But I also want to tread carefully.

I actually PM'd a mod here last night, asking about some of this, and whether it would be alright to post my .bat or not.

visitor · #9 Post by **visitor** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 5:20 am

Onesimus Prime wrote:...registry changes made by Activate.exe (that I saw). They look like "internet proxy alterations and window mountpoints," but I'm 99% sure they're not. They're actually just...places to hide the registration info for the program...

There are 2 registry entries under HKCU that allow the GotD MagicScore release to run activated on subsequent installations.
It would be inappropriate to post the specific values here, but if you did activate it in time, you have the data.

Local wrote:...If the reg entries from the activation were for the program I don't think I want it on my system.
Too sneaky...

From my experience it's more common for programs to store registration/activation data in the registry than anywhere else, except for fully portable applications. These ones could be seen as sneaky, I suppose, in that they are not stored directly under a reference to the specific software, but they don't appear harmful or problematic.

Onesimus Prime · #10 Post by **Onesimus Prime** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 12:48 pm

visitor wrote:There are 2 registry entries under HKCU that allow the GotD MagicScore release to run activated on subsequent installations.
It would be inappropriate to post the specific values here, but if you did activate it in time, you have the data....From my experience it's more common for programs to store registration/activation data in the registry than anywhere else, except for fully portable applications. These ones could be seen as sneaky, I suppose, in that they are not stored directly under a reference to the specific software, but they don't appear harmful or problematic.

Yep, I agree fully. My instructions for the launcher (if I get a mod's permission to post them) tell the user how to make their own .reg file to import, based on the data already on their system. The launcher includes the locations of that data (it has to, otherwise it couldn't clean up afterwards!), but not the values themselves. Posting the locations is iffy; posting the values would be piracy.

It's the "fully portable applications" part that's sad. Shareware programs like Reaper or LinkCollector Portable (both of which have been on these forums) have ways of portably storing registration info. MagicScore seems so close to this, since all the settings are already stored locally - just one more tiny step, and they wouldn't even need a launcher in order to be portable. Oh well, maybe someday...

P.S. Welcome to the forums, Visitor!