MobileSheets Forums

Full Version: Add Bookmarks to Setlists
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
Hi Forum Members! First post. This might be possible but I couldn't find it in the manual or through a search of the forums.

I have several PDFs that contain several songs and I've bookmarked the songs. I want to be able to add one of the songs from the PDF to my setlist. It seems I can only add the entire PDF, and then I have to bring up the Bookmark window during the set to select the specific song I want.

This seems such an ordinary thing to want to do. I must be missing something!

Thanks for any help you can provide.
Tom
Hello Tom,

At the moment, what you are trying to do isn't supported in that fashion. What you need to do is make a copy of the song containing the PDF (press and hold on the song and select "Copy Song"), and change the start and end pages so it only contains one of the songs from the PDF. Tap the hammer & wrench and unselect "Copy Files". This means that the same PDF will be reused for the original song and the new song. You can break up the one pdf into multiple songs this way.

I am going to be working on adding faster & more intuitive ways to do this. I will be looking for feedback in the future to make sure people are happy with whatever I design.

Mike
I understand Tom's request, because I initially tried to do the same thing Smile As I have probably mentioned before, I use MobileSheets in our church choir, and another member has an iPad with the app forScore, and that app's bookmarks work the way Tom describes.

In the past I followed Zuberman's approach for multiple songs that are in the same folio, but I've noticed an undesirable side effect: when I do a backup of my songs, it copies the source PDF multiple times, making the backup file larger than it needs to be (even though all of the songs point to the same PDF file). Because of this issue, I finally decided to break the PDF into separate JPG files (using the included utility) and I edited those songs to refer to the desired individual pages.

However, it would still be nice to be able to reference the individual songs the way Tom has suggested. One way to do this would be to redefine what a bookmark is, by including both a start and ending page. Maybe you could call this something different, like a "shortcut". And the shortcut could be used the same as any normal song, i.e. it could be added to set lists, etc. In fact, it would probably make sense to let the "shortcut" have its own meta data that is distinct from the parent "song" PDF, since if there are multiple songs in a PDF file, each might have its own artist, key, etc.

Just my 2 cents here.
I didn't even think about that problem with the backup files Snard. I'll make sure that gets fixed in the next update. Either way, I need to have something similar to the "shortcut" idea you've illustrated. I think I will support a way to do this both while a song is loaded (similar to creating a bookmark) or from the song editor (so that you can split up a file during creation time).
(02-18-2013, 04:51 AM)Zuberman Wrote: [ -> ]I didn't even think about that problem with the backup files Snard. I'll make sure that gets fixed in the next update. Either way, I need to have something similar to the "shortcut" idea you've illustrated. I think I will support a way to do this both while a song is loaded (similar to creating a bookmark) or from the song editor (so that you can split up a file during creation time).

Thanks, Mike! Looking forward to the new feature!

Tom
(02-18-2013, 04:51 AM)Zuberman Wrote: [ -> ]I didn't even think about that problem with the backup files Snard. I'll make sure that gets fixed in the next update. Either way, I need to have something similar to the "shortcut" idea you've illustrated. I think I will support a way to do this both while a song is loaded (similar to creating a bookmark) or from the song editor (so that you can split up a file during creation time).

Hi Mike,

just starting to use MobileSheets and like it very much, but I'd really appreciate the feature described in this thread (shortcuts/bookmarks like in forScore). Any plans on implementing this in the near future?

Thanks!

Corné
In the version 5 code, I've added code so that bookmarks can show up in the song list. The request at the top is really asking for the ability to break out a section of a PDF into a separate song that can then be added to a setlist. I already support this (but it's a little clunky). I'm hoping to make it a little easier in one of the upcoming updates, but I'm not sure which one yet.

Mike
(01-06-2014, 07:22 PM)Zuberman Wrote: [ -> ]In the version 5 code, I've added code so that bookmarks can show up in the song list. The request at the top is really asking for the ability to break out a section of a PDF into a separate song that can then be added to a setlist. I already support this (but it's a little clunky). I'm hoping to make it a little easier in one of the upcoming updates, but I'm not sure which one yet.

Mike

Hi Mike,

thanks. It are indeed two different things, but the code you add to version 5 so bookmarks can show up in a song list is really what I'm looking forward to. So that sounds good.

Corné
This seems a good evolution! When the 5th version is planned for release?