Posts: 7
Threads: 3
Joined: Oct 2020
Reputation:
0
A pdf can be an image or formatted text. Why can't I search for a song I've forgotten the title of but remember the hook or other phrase? I.e the text that is inside the pdf?
Posts: 13,368
Threads: 302
Joined: Apr 2012
Reputation:
236
I haven't added support for searching through PDF text content. In some PDF files, the text is represented as actual text, but in other PDFs, the page is just an image, and I can't extract text from an image (without performing OCR which I don't plan on supporting anytime soon). The other issue is that searching through the text of every PDF in the library can be incredibly slow. It involves having to open every single file in the library, search through every page of the file, then close the file and release all the resources. If you have thousands of PDFs, it could take a very long time to open every file and search through the contents. Having said that, I am going to look into supporting this when time allows.
Mike
Posts: 9
Threads: 2
Joined: Mar 2021
Reputation:
0
I also would like this feature. Ideally, the feature would include searching through all PDFs. I agree with you that would be slow, and would almost certainly require maintaining an index. However, the option of searching through the text in a SINGLE file (presumably the one that is open) would be fast and much easier to implement and more useful, at least to me. One could make a strong use case for this implementation. For example, I have a volume of Sweelinck organ works that is 260 pages. I wanted to find the toccatas in it, so I exported it, OCR'd it, and found them. It would have been MUCH easier to open it in MobileSheets and search for "toccata". I do hope you will consider implementing this feature on a per-piece basis.
Posts: 13,368
Threads: 302
Joined: Apr 2012
Reputation:
236
Yes, I do plan on supporting the option to search for text. Like many features, I just haven't had the time to implement it yet as it isn't requested as frequently as some other things.
Mike