[rik]

Hi

I have text/chordpro file of a song. I wanted to modify the song but keep a copy of the original version in case I needed to revert to it.

In Library view I selected the song and then selected Copy Song which opened a new song editor. I changed the name to mysong V2 to distinguish it from the original and proceeded to make some changes using the inbuilt text editor and then saved it.

So I was a bit surprised to find all the changes I had made to the new version were replicated in the original. If that's how it's supposed to work what is the purpose of "Copy Song"?

Thanks.

[sciurius]

Copy Song creates a copy of the song, but not of the song data files. So you can have different songs that all use the same PDF, JPG or, as you have found out, ChordPro file.
It may be a good idea to have a checkbox to this function, to allow physically copying of the associated data files. But that's up to Mike.

[rik]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I have to be honest and say I don't understand why you would want different songs that all share the same underlying data but it may just be the way I use MobileSheets.

I only occassionally need to copy songs e.g. if I have a slightly different arrangement for different instruments, so it's not a huge deal for me.

[Zubersoft]

There's a number of reasons why you would want multiple copies to use the same file. The copy song feature can be used to duplicate a song but specify a different page range. So if you have a 500 page PDF, you can have a song uses 5 pages, copy it, and then change the page range. The huge PDF won't be duplicated in this case. Or if you want multiple copies of the same song with different annotations or other properties. Or if you want the song to show up in the library under multiple titles (as there currently isn't support for multiple titles per song). I actually can think of fewer cases where you'd want to copy a song but have a new instance of the file, as this would only make sense with text/chord pro files where you want to edit the file contents.

One workaround would be to copy the text in the text editor, create a new song, generate a new chord pro file on the files tab, and then paste in the contents.

I think if supporting this feature is important, I wouldn't want to overload the copy song feature, I would rather have a different action such as "Duplicate file for new song" or just "Duplicate files", and this would create copies of the files in the MobileSheetsPro cache directory and open the song editor as if those two files were just imported to create a new song.

[itsme]

I use 'copy song' with Chordpro files to create two songs (e.g.for different bands or line-ups) in different keys. Changes to the lyrics show up in every copy wheras collections and set lists show the different key.
In general: it's about same file with different meta data.

[rik]

Thanks for the replies. I hadn't considered the multi-page PDF scenario but it looks an interesting possibility.

It's only an occasional thing for me, such as using slightly different chords in different versions, so if necessary I will use Mike's workaround in future.