While practising I have to make frequent annontations. When using the metronome I would prefer it stays on so I can continue right away. Right now it turns off when triple tapping.

I came to play some Irish tunes from Paul Hardy's Tune Book, where many songs consist of not more than two or three lines. I was not able to crop them so that only one song is shown at a time because of cropping's minimum size. See attached screen shot.
Please reduce the minimum height by at least 30 percent or maybe to the half of what it is today. Thank you.
btw: I like the crop feature very much. It's easy and convenient to use and I use it all the time.

Attached Files

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I just wanted to let everyone know that I posted some additional videos of the new features in version 5.0.0. There are four videos because the screen capture software Google provides cuts off videos at 3 minutes. Once I'm ready to start making tutorial videos, I will use a better setup. The video links are posted below:

Preview #1
Preview #2
Preview #3
Preview #4

In these four videos, you will find demonstrations of the new song editor, including the ability to add any number of files to a song, automatic cropping, tons of new fields, the audio tab, and the MIDI tab. I forgot to demonstrate the new cropping screen that lets you drag the corners manually. I also showed off the new group editor screen, which lets you set up things like the setlists, collections, artists, albums, etc. As part of this, I showed off the new drag & drop features when working with setlists, which should make it much easier to drop songs in the middle of an existing setlist.

After the editors, I showed off the new display modes, including the single page, two page, half page in portrait, and vertical scrolling modes. I also showed off the ability to scale pages to fill the screen if desired. The two page display mode also has multiple options for page turns, including a single page turn, two pages at a time, or alternating pages.

Lastly, I showed a few new screens, such as the reformatted batch import screen, some of the new settings including the song format screen, and the pedal actions screen.

This was once again a quick and dirty preview, but I wanted to show people where things are at. I still have a number of features that have to be fully tested, including the new sharing features and the many available options with text files, but I'm doing my best to try to get things finished as fast as I can. I want this release to be rock solid, but it's amazing how much time it takes to get even minor features completely bug free.

Thanks everyone for your continued support and patience,
Mike

Things have been quiet for the past couple months, as I have been finishing up the coding for version 5. Unfortunately, as I got closer to completion, I realized that there were a few things I hadn't fully thought out (a repeating theme), so there was more work than anticipated. All of the pieces for version 5.0.0 are now complete, but there is a lot of internal testing that has to be conducted before the update is ready for a beta release. Over the next couple weeks, I will be trying to iron out remaining bugs and get things as stable as possible for the beta. A lot of people have been kind and have volunteered to be testers, so I will be sending out emails in the near future for those who are interested.

Thanks everyone for your patience - this has been a long time in the making!

Mike

Hello all,

Things have been pretty quiet on the website for awhile, and some of you may be wondering why. As many of you are aware, a very big update has been in the works for quite some time. This update is addressing a huge amount of user feature requests, and is going to make MobileSheets a much more polished app. Due to the complexity of how much is changing, the update has taken me much, much longer than I had anticipated. To explain why the update has been delayed, I wanted to address some common questions I've been getting:

Why is the update taking so long to finish?

Over the years of supporting MobileSheets, I've learned a lot about developing an app for the Android OS, and some of the unique challenges that come with having to support so many different devices with different version of the Android operating system. When I first started out, I had a limited number of features I wanted MobileSheets to support, and they were based mainly on my own needs. Now that the user base has grown, my focus has changed to providing users what they need. Unfortunately, the current design of MobileSheets has limitations that were preventing a lot of requested features from being added. Faced with these limitations, I decided to make a lot of big changes to the design for version 5.0.0. This means changing core parts of the system like the underlying rendering engine for displaying pages so I can support more display modes (two pages up at a time, vertical scrolling, etc). With any big changes of this nature come new technical problems to solve and a lot of new things to test. All of these things take a considerable amount of time.

With the new update, I didn't want to abandon users with older tablets (running older version of the operating system). This has created some unique challenges in its own right, and has slowed down progress. I may have to phase out older devices at some point, but with the amount of new features that are coming, I didn't want any of my users to be left out.

What is being added in the update?

While the list of changes is pretty long, I can cover some of the main new features:

• Complete overhaul of the rendering engine to support vertical scrolling, two pages up at a time, scrolling animations with page turns, and half page turns in portrait.
  
• Support for new file types including .txt files and .chordpro files.
  
• New custom made audio player with support for a-b looping, and setting start/end times.
  
• Support for multiple values in almost all library fields (i.e. multiple artists, albums, composers). Lots of new fields to meet user demands.
  
• Simpler file management
  
• Automatic cropping and positional pinch zooming (what you would normally expect)
  
• Cleaner interfaces, use of real tabs, and better icons
  
• Sharing features, including the ability to email songs/setlists
  
• Better automatic scrolling features
  
• Integrated MIDI support
  

As more users are beginning to get the 4.4 KitKat update for their Nexus 7/10 devices, I've been getting reports of some issues. The largest one is with the settings menu which was causing an instant crash. I have addressed all of the reported issues, so KitKat users should be up and running again.

I've also got a number of reports recently about the metronome not functioning correctly. For awhile now, I've been unhappy with the accuracy of the metronome, so I used this opportunity to completely rewrite my metronome engine. Users should find that the metronome is very accurate across all devices now. I also added several display modes - circle (slight improvement over existing visual display), glow (color at the borders of the screen), and metronome (a metronome icon that switches the arm position).

The full list of changes can be seen below:

MobileSheets v4.1.5
- Complete redesign of the metronome engine to improve accuracy
- Added multiple metronome display modes (circle, glow, metronome)
- Added sharpen dialog to provide more control over the intensity of the image cleanup
- Added debounce support to pedal presses for link points
- Fixed text annotations on devices running KitKat
- Tap twice on the recent button to clear the recent list
- Improved scaling of caption text on library screen
- Last selected annotation stamp sizes are now saved independently for each stamp
- Copied songs now properly copy the global zoom value (and several other settings)
- Fixed crashes on the settings screen for devices running KitKat (4.4)
- Fixed various reported crashes

Another weekend, another update. This one brings a number of new options, and some user interface cleanup. The first new feature I'm quite excited about is the "Sharpen" option that can be accessed by tapping the new popup menu at the top left of the song overlay. The sharpen option is quite useful for cleaning up poorly scanned pages by making gray/washed out sections much whiter, and by darkening the notes to provide contrast. It does come at the expense of some rendering speed, so the feature should only be enabled for files that require it. I've included a couple screenshots below to show the effect.

Normal Image
Processed Image

As you can see, there is quite a bit of improvement in the image quality. The effect is even better on an actual device - test it out!

Here are the rest of the changes for your viewing pleasure.

MobileSheets v4.1.4
- Added new sharpen option to clean up poorly scanned pages
- Moved common song/setlist buttons into a popup menu (top left of image overlay)
- Fixed bug with wrong song sometimes shown in a setlist that reuses songs multiple times
- Added option to completely hide the navigation bar on devices running KitKat or greater
- Fixed bug with batch import 'avoid duplicates' not working correctly
- Modified popup message to inform users that the performance mode disables the overlay
- Fixed bug with collection editor not properly removing songs when articles are ignored during sorting
- Fixed bugs with importing audio files from some incompatible sources
- Added pedal debounce to the link start/previous page, link end/next page pedal mode
- Switched all dialogs to alert dialogs to ensure compatibility with all tablets
- Added 'Restore Database Backup' option under the advanced settings to restore one of the automatic database backups (use with care)
- Fixed menu options for setlists in the recent menu
- Fixed issue with songs renaming files needlessly when edited
- Files are automatically copied locally when importing from dropbox or other cloud storage
- Files are now set to not copy by default when a song is copied
- Added option to view release notes in the options
- Fixed a number of crashes

Mike

Hey all,

I pushed out another release to fix some reported crashes and an issue with the audio player not showing up correctly. I also addressed an issue with annotations changing colors while switching between tools.

MobileSheets v4.1.3
- Fixed issue with annotations switching colors when switching between tools
- Fixed issue with media player not showing correctly
- Fixed issue with media player popup window not showing the 'tap to show' text
- Fixed various crashes

MobileSheetsCompanion v1.5.6
- Dialogs are now correctly displayed above the currently displayed window
- Fixed a large number of reported crashes

Mike

If anyone has tried to connect the companion over USB and has run into issues, it's most likely because I forgot include one important fact: you have to download a device driver for your tablet in order for your PC to be able to talk to it. I have pushed out a new version of the companion with an updated help dialog that explains the steps necessary to get the USB connection going. For reference, there is a list of vendor links for USB drivers here: http://developer.android.com/tools/extra...lingDriver

I wish connecting over USB was easier, but at least this is a one time thing - once you have it set up to connect over USB, it will work from there on out.

Mike

*UPDATE: If you happened to download the companion app this morning and are now experiencing problems with it crashing on startup, you must uninstall it, and redownload it from www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/MobileSheetsCompanion.msi . I really apologize for the inconvenience - in my efforts to improve my ability to diagnose and solve bug reports from users, some diagnostic code was left in place that crashes the app. If you have not downloaded the update yet, it is perfectly fine to update now.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In order to fix recent issues that were preventing some users from viewing PDFs properly, I needed to prepare another update. In addition to a large number of bug fixes, I also wanted to introduce a helpful new feature: connecting the companion over USB. I've been wanting to add this capability for some time, but there were number of technical difficulties that prevented it. The main issue is that the Android OS doesn't normally allow data to be sent over USB unless it's related to USB accessories. There is only one exception - when it's used by developers during application development. Google distributes a tool called ADB that has a number of useful features for development, including the ability to send data over USB. I am now packaging ADB with the companion app, and utilizing it to allow USB connections.

If you are interested in using the USB connectivity, there is one caveat - you must enable USB debugging on your device. This is not a setting you normally want to leave on, so only toggle it on while using the companion app, and then toggle it off afterward (Google requires users to do this manually - it cannot be driven by code). In case anyone has any concerns, I am not using ADB for any purpose except to send the same exact data that is sent over Wifi. If you need instructions on how to enable USB debugging, there is an explanation in the Companion App under the help menu (Help->How to Enable USB Debugging).

Another useful feature with this update is the ability to restore library backups from the companion app. Coupled with USB connectivity, this makes it much easier to manage backups solely from the PC, instead of needing to keep them on the tablet. I am really excited to offer both of these features to users finally, and am looking forward to hearing feedback on them.

The full list of changes can be seen below:

MobileSheets v4.1.2
- Added option to connect to companion over USB (Wifi must still be turned on)
- Added ability to restore library backups from the companion app
- The overlay is now properly hidden when performance mode is toggled
- Fixed issues with HP TouchPads not loading songs normally
- Fixed issues with AEON tablets not loading PDFs
- Removed connection profile settings
- Fixed various UI layouts
- Fixed reported crashes

MobileSheetsCompanion v1.5.1
- Added ability to restore library backups from the companion
- Added option to connect to tablet using USB
- Reorganized the menu options
- Added option to enable or disable whether articles are considered while sorting

Thanks again for everyone's patience while I get version 5 ready, and all of the excellent feedback.

Mike