• 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Beta testers needed for new annotations functionality
After more testing, here are some bugs/observations (hope it's not too much at once):

When the delete tool is in the "draw box" mode, I have to draw a box that's much bigger than the annotation to delete it.

I'm seeing some strange behaviour with the stylus buttons. Just to note, I have a Renaisser Raphael 520 stylus with two buttons. In Windows, the first button switches to delete in most drawing apps, similar to the back end of a Surface stylus, and the second button switches to right-click (and Windows draws a small circle around the pointer when this is pressed). 

In MSP, the first button switches to delete mode (whichever mode is currently activated), which I guess is correct. The second one seems to be determined by the Stylus Button Tool setting, but this causes some strange behaviour. 
- Before making any changes to this setting, the button operated as a right-click
- Now that I've made changes, there's no option for me to go back operating as a right-click
- When 'none' is selected, pressing the button still makes the stylus act as if no button is pressed, but I still see the circle that windows draws indicating right-click. This only happens if I press the button before approaching the screen, and goes away after I tap the screen.
- In select mode, it doesn't work at all. It draws the selection box (or highlights the object when you tap), but nothing stays selected when you lift the stylus.

I'm seeing some strange behaviour with favourites too. 
- When adding a pen, highlighter, shape (maybe others) as a favourite, it's always saved as 100% opacity. 
- I also sometimes see the opacity change when I use the tools after this, though I haven't figured out exactly when.

If I draw a stroke with the highlighter, then delete it, then undo the delete, the stroke becomes messed up, as if it's a filled shape rather than a stroke.

Finally, two suggestions:
- It would be nice to see the 'favorite' tools right in the radial menu. It would be more consistent with the rest of the menu: clicking the arrows on the outside ring usually loads another set of buttons into the radial menu, so an equivalent for favorites would be to show the 8 first favorite tools right in the radial menu, while clicking on the item inside the ring would pop out the square box. If the favorite tools were in the radial menu, you could then use the same interface to edit the tools without having to delete and re-favorite them.
- It would be nice to have a Stylus Button Tool setting for undo. This is probably the button I use the most, and mapping that to a stylus button would be nice. There are some stylus utilities that remap a button to ctrl-z, so it's a common feature.
Reply
MartinH,

Thanks for the bug reports - I'll see what I can do to reproduce them and get them fixed. The stylus one may be difficult if I'm unable to reproduce that with my Surface Pro stylus, as it's the only Windows stylus I have. I'll study the code to see if I can come up with an explanation for what you've described.

As for your suggestions, I think you are probably right about the favorites, although it's going to mean a fair amount of work to make those changes. I want to make sure you can remove favorites (reordering is obviously out of the question on the radial menu) and update them by long pressing and selecting an option from the context menu, but if you remove one, I have to shuffle around all the entries in the radial menu to reflect the ordering in the favorites popup. I'll see if I can get that done tomorrow for Windows and Android. I'll look into supporting undo with the stylus button, that one seems like it might be a little tricky. As you are probably aware after testing the feature, I can't respond to a stylus button being pressed until the stylus is touched to the screen (there is no interface for me to detect the button press otherwise). Supporting undo would be a little different from the other options, because with undo, I'd want to process the undo action, but then ignore every other touch action that is generated after that, until the stylus is lifted and pressed down again. So I'll just have to make sure that all works correctly.

Thanks,
Mike
Reply
Mike,

If there's anything I can do to test/debug the stylus to help figure out the behaviour, let me know. I would probably be able to set up a debugging environment, if needed. My stylus (Renaisser) works differently than the Surface pen, but as far as I can tell it maps to equivalent functionality. Pressing the first button on my stylus is equivalent to using the back of a Surface pen, and pressing the second button is the same as the Surface pen side button (turns taps into right-clicks).

Regarding the feature requests, after understanding more about how the stylus actually works, I can see how it would be difficult to implement an undo button. It seems the buttons themselves don't actually trigger events in Windows (except the eraser button on the Surface pen, which is linked through bluetooth). The fact that a button is pressed is only indicated to windows when the stylus approaches or touches the screen.

So it doesn't seem feasible to trigger an undo on pressing the button, but I think it would be reasonble to trigger an undo every time you tap the screen when the button is held down. It's a bit unconventional, but would be quite functional once you know how to do it.
Reply
I found something strange using the latest Win10 beta.
When expanded I can move the radial menu at will and at any speed.
When reduced I can only move it slowly and it stops at some positions.
If I try to move it faster it changes color to orange.
I'm still seeing some crashes, but have no luck recreating them
Don
Il ne faut pas rouler vite... il faut freiner tard
Reply
New strangeness this evening.
I was practicing, adding annotations as I went along and then for no reason that I could see it started placing the annotations about 5mm to the right of where I placed them.
Then when I left annotation mode they moved back to the left to the correct place.
That is both stamps and freehand with the pen.
??
Il ne faut pas rouler vite... il faut freiner tard
Reply
That is definitely strange. It sounds almost like it was applying a zoom factor when there wasn't one. When you went back into annotation mode, did they maintain their correct position?

Thanks,
Mike
Reply
Cool!
Reply
(10-02-2020, 07:15 AM)Zubersoft Wrote: That is definitely strange. It sounds almost like it was applying a zoom factor when there wasn't one

That could be it, a some point there was a "bubble" on the screen with zoomed text that I had problems getting rid of. 
I forgot to mention that- sorry.
Under what conditions does such a "zoom bubble" show up. And how does one turn it off?  It was certainly not wanted.
Don
Il ne faut pas rouler vite... il faut freiner tard
Reply
(10-02-2020, 07:15 AM)Zubersoft Wrote: When you went back into annotation mode, did they maintain their correct position?

This morning I restarted the compi and MSP and the annotations move to the right when in annotation mode and back to the left when I leave annotation.
Consistantly.
Il ne faut pas rouler vite... il faut freiner tard
Reply
When I try cutting and pasting (great new feature, thank you) I'm getting only one rectangle in the layer (the one I cut out). 

Shouldn't there be another rectangle to manipulate in the layer for the pasted item? That's not there.
Reply
Today I restored whole database from previous version and found some bugs with annotations.

Some highlights from previous version is converted to freehand right? Some of them are converted to wrong shape somehow and others wrong size. Maybe this is unavoidable.

Freehand lines display fine but when I try to resize them they are getting much thinner. To get them in right size I have to resize them much larger. For example a line that has 4 width I must set to 14 to get it to visually match a newly created freehand notation. A bit hard to explain, hope it makes sense. It would be quite troublesome if I have to redo all annotations.
Surface Pro 8, i5, Windows 11
Pageflip Firefly Pedal
Reply
BRX - Only if you enabled the setting to allow editing of embedded PDF annotations, as the pasted image is now part of the file itself, not managed in MobileSheetsPro. As mentioned earlier, I can't save image data in the database (or least I have no desire to save blobs of data in the database that could increase its size significantly), so I rely on the ability to embed the image in the PDF, which just increases the size of the PDF file which is fine. This means that you can't manage that pasted image unless MobileSheets is reading out the annotations from the PDF itself and letting you manipulate them.

DonC - Can you please backup that song my long pressing or right-clicking it on the library screen and select Share->Export as .msf and email the .msf to mike@zubersoft.com? I want to test to see if I can reproduce that. If your library isn't too large, creating a library backup under Settings->Backup and Restore->Backup Library would be even better, as then I would be able to use all the same settings as you. I can't currently reproduce what you are seeing with the annotations shifting. A couple things you can try include resetting the zoom & pan for the song under the display options->Zoom/Pan Settings, clearing the cropping to see if it's related to that, rotating the tablet to see if it has something to do with the tablet orientation/scaling, change the page scaling mode to see if it's related to that (if you've made changes to that), and toggle on/off the option to draw highlights behind page content to see if it's related to that. 

As far as the "bubble", that is the stamp zoom preview. If you press on the screen with a finger while the stamp tool is selected, it shows a preview of what is under your finger so you can place the stamp correctly. Your finger could otherwise hide the stamp you are placing, making it difficult to position. I can think of no reason to make that optional, as it doesn't show up with a mouse or stylus, and it's really useful when placing small stamps with your finger.

Thanks,
Mike
Reply
Cmart - I'm glad you are checking that, because one of the main things I wanted users to identify is issues with their existing annotations after updating. If you are restoring a windows backup, in theory it should look identical other than text annotations. So if you are seeing issues/differences, then that's something I need to investigate. Is there any chance you can share the library backup file with me at mike@zubersoft.com? You'd have to share a link through the cloud. If that's not possible, I understand, but then I'd like you to at least export one of the songs you've been working with from the old version as a .msf so I can test importing that into the new version. Let me know if either is possible.

As far as sizing - the sizing in the old version is inherently incompatible with the way things are sized in the new version due to how scaling worked with the old approach. I didn't size things in the old version based on the unscaled document page - I actually scaled it based on the difference between the amount the page was scaled when the annotation was first created compared with the scaling of the page at the time the annotation is drawn (i.e. if the device scaled up the page by 150% to fit the screen, and then you load that song on a device with a larger screen and it scaled up the page by 200%, the annotations would be scaled by 2/1.5 = ~1.33). I know this will create some headaches for users who are transitioning to the new version, but there really isn't a good way for me to handle combining the old approach with the new. Having said that, you shouldn't have to make any changes to existing annotations to get them to show up the same as they did with the old version. My goal is to have existing annotations still render exactly like they used to.

Thanks,
Mike
Reply
(10-03-2020, 03:06 AM)Zubersoft Wrote: Cmart - I'm glad you are checking that, because one of the main things I wanted users to identify is issues with their existing annotations after updating. If you are restoring a windows backup, in theory it should look identical other than text annotations. So if you are seeing issues/differences, then that's something I need to investigate. Is there any chance you can share the library backup file with me at mike@zubersoft.com? You'd have to share a link through the cloud. If that's not possible, I understand, but then I'd like you to at least export one of the songs you've been working with from the old version as a .msf so I can test importing that into the new version. Let me know if either is possible.

As far as sizing - the sizing in the old version is inherently incompatible with the way things are sized in the new version due to how scaling worked with the old approach. I didn't size things in the old version based on the unscaled document page - I actually scaled it based on the difference between the amount the page was scaled when the annotation was first created compared with the scaling of the page at the time the annotation is drawn (i.e. if the device scaled up the page by 150% to fit the screen, and then you load that song on a device with a larger screen and it scaled up the page by 200%, the annotations would be scaled by 2/1.5 = ~1.33). I know this will create some headaches for users who are transitioning to the new version, but there really isn't a good way for me to handle combining the old approach with the new. Having said that, you shouldn't have to make any changes to existing annotations to get them to show up the same as they did with the old version. My goal is to have existing annotations still render exactly like they used to.

Thanks,
Mike

I will send you a mfs-file just gonna check if same issue is present when importing and old mfs, otherwwize I have to send you the whole backup.

One other thing I noticed which also is true for new annotations. If I have annotations close to bottom of page and select it the edit window with resize etc. is displayed outside screen and is not movable. Sometimes I get a crash when doing this too.
Surface Pro 8, i5, Windows 11
Pageflip Firefly Pedal
Reply
Hi Mike,
I will send you a zip of my library backup in a couple of hours.
Maybe I touched the screen with a finger, but I don't think so as I was using a stylus as it happened.
I have discovered that using the pen tool is much, much, much better than in the old version.
I may go to just using the pen for annotating and forgetting stamping completely.
Don
Il ne faut pas rouler vite... il faut freiner tard
Reply




Users browsing this thread:
7 Guest(s)


  Theme © 2014 iAndrew  
Powered By MyBB, © 2002-2024 MyBB Group.