[jusmee]

Is there any way to properly handle chordpro format inside a PDF - such as Jim's Songbook?   Mobilesheets opens the file and displays the songs, but the chords are just shown as text and I cannot see how to transpose them.

[BRX]

You can't transpose PDFs. They have fixed content and it's all only an image to MS.

You have to convert it into chordpro format to be able to transpose it in MS (or otherwise).

[itsme]

ChordPro is a plain text format. It cannot be "handled inside a PDF", see https://www.chordpro.org/chordpro/index.html
If you mean this https://ozbcoz.com/ with "Jim's Songbook" you can download the songs in proper ChordPro format here: https://ozbcoz.com/Songs/cp/

[jusmee]

You can't transpose PDFs. They have fixed content and it's all only an image to MS.

You have to convert it into chordpro format to be able to transpose it in MS (or otherwise).

Songs in Jims songbook are not stored as an image.  PDFs can, and do contain text, which you can copy and paste to prove it (no OCR needed)
e.g. 

artisteter Wood (Plinky Plonky Pete) writereter Wood (Plinky Plonky Pete)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyMYgD1IA9Q
Thanks to Peter Wood (Plinky Plonky Pete)
A parody of Route 66
Intro:-
[A] {1234} {1234} {1234} {1...}
If [A] yoou--- ever [D] motor from the north-[A]west
Take the [D] A road, the okay road that’s the [A] best
Drive some [E7] more down the [D] A thirty-[A]four {234} [E7] {123}
It [A] winds through [D] Stafford to the [A] coast
More than [D] two hundred miles at the [A] most


However to do this for a huge number of songs is a big task.  I guess a solution here, would be if there is  a way to auto split the pdf into single page text files and import them all into MS.

[itsme]

pls read my post above

[jusmee]

pls read my post above

There are products out there that do exactly what you are saying cannot be done, i.e. they handle chordpro inside a PDF.  Pardon me for asking if mobilesheets can do it.  I have used mobilesheets since way back at the beginning and didn't want to change.

[itsme]

That sounds interesting. Can you link to a tool that handles ChordPro inside a PDF?

[Zubersoft]

I'm not going to try to muddy all the PDF processing with trying to figure out if the PDF contains ChordPro content and trying to render it in a different fashion (that would be a complete mess with how PDF libraries work). However, I'm not opposed to having an option to convert a PDF to ChordPro if MobileSheets detects that the PDF has text in it, and the text seems to be ChordPro content. If you want that as an option, let me know. Seems like that's not necessary if there are standalone files you can download instead of the PDF though. I don't believe it's very common to use PDFs with ChordPro content in them versus just using a .cho file. That's why this request has never come up before.

Mike

[jusmee]

I'm not going to try to muddy all the PDF processing with trying to figure out if the PDF contains ChordPro content and trying to render it in a different fashion (that would be a complete mess with how PDF libraries work). However, I'm not opposed to having an option to convert a PDF to ChordPro if MobileSheets detects that the PDF has text in it, and the text seems to be ChordPro content. If you want that as an option, let me know. Seems like that's not necessary if there are standalone files you can download instead of the PDF though. I don't believe it's very common to use PDFs with ChordPro content in them versus just using a .cho file. That's why this request has never come up before.

Mike

There may be standalone files, but the point of the PDF is to gather large numbers of files into a convenient package.  There are literally thousands of songs in some collections and it is impossible to do them all individually.  So, if Mobilesheets can convert the PDF , maybe at import time, to , I would suggest, a collection of chordpro songs, then that would work fantastically.

 Those big collections, such as Jims Songbook, can be used as the basis of a common list that strangers can reference when having a get together to play soome music.  This facility would enhance that, as, at the moment, I am forced to read the chordpro as plain text and we cannot change the keys, etc.

[jusmee]

That sounds interesting. Can you link to a tool that handles ChordPro inside a PDF?

A guy at a recent get together was using one, and I believe he said it was songbook pro.

[sciurius]

There are tools that can extract the text from a PDF document, but the text pieces are not necessarily in the right order. Manual inspection and post processing will always be required.

It may be easier to locate the ChordPro 'original' data on sites like Ultimate Guitar.

[jusmee]

Just to show I don't sit around and expect others to solve my problems      I eventually found a page that had links to the original song files, not just database entries.  I then found a browser extensiion that would download all the links on a page.  This is necessary, because no-one seems to have them as a collection in something easy like a zip file.

So I zipped up all the .pro files that were downloaded and copied the zip file to my tablet.  I unzipped them and imported them into Mobilesheets making sure the metadata put them all in a named collection.  

I was a little worried that the sheer number (over 4000) might cause a problem, but due to the good programming of Mobilesheets, it all went smoothly.  I now have an easy to search and indexed collection of all these songs in chordpro format that can be transposed as well.

[itsme]

The number of songs in a MobileSheets database seems not to be an issue. My main library that I use on stage has around 2000 entries, but I even have a second library to maintain my full collection with more than 20000 songs which still runs smoothly. Switching between the libraries shows a small delay (some seconds) but after that it works like a charm.
Just for curiosity: what was the browser extension that you used? By now I used WinHTTrack Website Copier https://www.httrack.com/ for tasks like this.

[BRX]

Just to ensure you even more: On my tablet I regularily use for gigging I have > 50k songs (I know, I know). Never had problems, always working smoothly. And almost all are PDFs.

[jusmee]

The number of songs in a MobileSheets database seems not to be an issue. My main library that I use on stage has around 2000 entries, but I even have a second library to maintain my full collection with more than 20000 songs which still runs smoothly. Switching between the libraries shows a small delay (some seconds) but after that it works like a charm.
Just for curiosity: what was the browser extension that you used? By now I used WinHTTrack Website Copier https://www.httrack.com/ for tasks like this.

It was called DownThemAll!   but there are a number of them.   It's a chrome based extension