[Zubersoft]

Annotations are currently in beta. Expected release date is around the 20-21st. I will post a full list of fixes/enhancements soon that will also make it into the update. I have also set up a bug tracking system at http://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/issues that I will begin using soon to keep track of user suggestions and to track my progress in solving bugs. Users will be free to submit bug reports.

[TheatricalLady]

Still very keen to help with the beta testing. Just let me know when you are ready to start testing :-)

[TheatricalLady]

Hi Mike

Not wanting to sound impatient - but just wondering about an ETA on the annotations - I know that you said you were about 75% done - but just wondering if you realisticly expect that remaining 25% to take a week or a fortnight or a month etc??

Sorry - just this is the one thing that I REALLY need to be able to use in this app for my Singing and shows. :-S

Sorry to be impatient...

[Zubersoft]

Hi,

I completely understand where you are coming from. I've completed the first round of coding. I'm now going through and testing everything, fixing bugs, and making sure it's ready to be distributed for beta testing. I should have a fair amount of time this weekend to devote to MobileSheets, so I'm hoping to have something people can test by the end of the weekend if everything goes well. I'll post an update as things progress this weekend.

Mike

[TheatricalLady]

Thanks for the update Mike - sorry again if I am pestering - I am just really excited about the prospect of the annotations in MobileSheets - it is the one thing that my friends hold over me with thier ipads at the moment - I cant wait to help with the testing and have a stable product we can use Super excited - hope all went well over the weekend.

[Zubersoft]

Thanks for the update Mike - sorry again if I am pestering - I am just really excited about the prospect of the annotations in MobileSheets - it is the one thing that my friends hold over me with thier ipads at the moment - I cant wait to help with the testing and have a stable product we can use Super excited - hope all went well over the weekend.

I put in a lot of time on Annotations this weekend (around 25 hours). I was hoping to get the beta version ready, but there were a slew of technical issues that prevented me from getting as far as I hoped. The Android API makes some things really easy, and other things extremely difficult.

As an overview for how I'm handling annotations, I wanted it to be similar to powerpoint drawing. You can create textboxes, lines, rectangles, circles, highlight, and drop bitmaps (stamps) on top of the sheet music. You can edit properties for each of these. With textboxes, as you can see in the images below, I have a separate floating window that is used for input, as it was easier to implement this way. You can select items either by dragging a selection window, tapping on them, or using the list in the top left. There is also full support for undo/redo. Hopefully this will be intuitive to people. I'll be anxious to hear feedback from the beta testers once everything is ready.

The images below are just a preview. Anything is subject to change, but it at least gives you an idea of how things are progressing:

First, I created a textbox and entered in some text.
[Image: ann1.png]



Next, I created a second textbox and entered in text. I then made it bold, increased the size, and chose a different font. I also clicked the checkbox that specifies it should have a border (in the extra settings you can get to by tapping the little overflow button below the x in the floating window).
[Image: ann2.png]



You can see the text in the top right has a border now, whereas the first textbox does not. I also decided to create a rectangle and a line. The line was selected, and then I drew a selection box around everything.
[Image: ann3.png]



After releasing the selection box, it selection everything, which you can see by the blue-dashed lines around everything, and the checkboxes in the list at the top left. With everything selected, you could change the foreground color for them all at once, or the fill color, etc.
[Image: ann4.png]



I'll keep working to get things done as fast as possible. Hopefully by next weekend I'll have a beta version ready. Thanks everyone for your patience.

[srothkin]

I'd like to throw in a few suggestions.

1. Allow user to set a default color to be used for all annotations that the user hasn't changed the color on.
   
2. Some way of printing a page or entire song with annotations merged in (preferably from the companion app). This would save me the trouble of going back and handwriting the same annotations onto my hard copy (our high holiday choir currently is only allowing tablet use during rehearsal but not during the actual service, plus I like to have the paper as a backup in case the tablet freezes).
   

[Booze]

I think this is great work

But would it be possible to write "free forms". For example: I'm using the Galaxy Note 10.1 with the S-Pen, so I don't want to make a textfield to write a comment on an alphanumeric keyboard, but I want to write directly by hand some fingerings, or I want to mark some phrases, or to highlight a difficult passage.
This would be exactly what I need.

[Zubersoft]

Srothkin
1. I can definitely add a way of overriding the defaults. I'll create a new section for this in the settings.
2. Printing is still a difficult problem to tackle. The thing that makes the most sense right now is Google Cloud Print. The other option is that I could have the companion app command the tablet to generate a bitmap with annotations intact, send that bitmap over the network, and then allow you to print the resulting image with whatever program you want. Adding annotation support to the companion app is a huge job that I can't tackle for a little while, but once I add it, it should make this process easier. I also need to add printing support directly to the companion app. All of these updates to the companion app are actually part of a larger effort to eventually produce a MobileSheets equivalent for the PC that could run on Windows 8 tablets (or Windows 7/XP), that could also sync with a tablet allowing you to use a laptop or tablet to view and manage your library. The PC MobileSheets would be a separate purchase most likely, but I could offer a discount for existing tablet users, and bundles for those that need both. These are all just ideas for the future, as I don't currently have enough time to work on it all to make it happen very soon.

Booze
There is currently a freeform mode (it's selectable from the dropdown at the bottom left called "Draw Mode"). You can also use freeform mode with the highlighting capability. The question is whether the input with the Galaxy Note 10.1 is going to be fine enough to provide good results. I don't have a Galaxy Note 10.1 to test with myself, so it would be really helpful if some users could beta test with the Galaxy Note 10.1 and let me know how well it works. Anyone with a Galaxy Note 10.1 that wants to help beta test? I'll do as much testing as I can with just my finger, but I doubt it will be as nice. I'm also concerned about performance with a very large number of freemode drawings on the screen, so this is another thing I will be testing.

Also Booze (or anyone else that wants to comment), for highlighting, would it be better to be able to just draw a box around the section you want to highlight, or do you want to just use freeform drawing to drag over things? I'm going to support both, but I'm trying to figure out which should be the default mode. The default mode will be configurable, so perhaps it doesn't matter. I'm more curious as to how most people will want to use the highlighting feature.

[concertmaster3]

Mike,


what stamps and shapes are included? if you haven't done it yet, can crescendo and decrescendo be added? or can those be drawn somehow? maybe freeform?

Thanks for all the hard work you're putting into this! As you can tell, we are all REALLY excited!
Ron

[Zubersoft]

I am providing a huge list of built-in stamps. I'm going to have a simple list of commonly used ones, and a larger list that you can access by toggling the simple mode off. I have all of the various notes (eighth, quarter, half, whole, etc), all accidentals, crescendo, decrescendo, volume & dynamics, rhythm dots, piano pedal marks, etc. What I need to do is figure out the best default size for all of these images. This will take a little bit of time. Once I have that all figured out, I need to make sure the stamp size option makes it easy enough to resize the stamps to fit various sheet music. I am also going to be adding support for custom bitmaps, where you can have a list of of your own symbols and images that you can then drop on any page. This will probably not make it into the first release, as it would delay me from releasing the update.

[concertmaster3]

sounds great! the addition of the custom bitmap will allow us to import fingering chart images!

[Booze]

Anyone with a Galaxy Note 10.1 that wants to help beta test? I'll do as much testing as I can with just my finger, but I doubt it will be as nice. I'm also concerned about performance with a very large number of freemode drawings on the screen, so this is another thing I will be testing.

Yes of course, it would be a pleasure for me being a beta tester!

Also Booze (or anyone else that wants to comment), for highlighting, would it be better to be able to just draw a box around the section you want to highlight, or do you want to just use freeform drawing to drag over things?

Thinking of classical music like Chopin in your example, I think it could be
easier marking with freeforms, than with boxes. Sometimes notes go up and down outside the systems so it could happen, that at the beginning you have a very big box, where you need only a small one. Perhaps it would be possible, to rotate boxes in free degrees, so you don't have always horizontal boxes.
I don't know if this is possible in PDFs with sheet music, but highlighting difficult sections or solos would be a great feature. I use it often in RepliGo Reader to mark important things in texts.

[TheatricalLady]

I am providing a huge list of built-in stamps. I'm going to have a simple list of commonly used ones, and a larger list that you can access by toggling the simple mode off. I have all of the various notes (eighth, quarter, half, whole, etc), all accidentals, crescendo, decrescendo, volume & dynamics, rhythm dots, piano pedal marks, etc. What I need to do is figure out the best default size for all of these images. This will take a little bit of time. Once I have that all figured out, I need to make sure the stamp size option makes it easy enough to resize the stamps to fit various sheet music. I am also going to be adding support for custom bitmaps, where you can have a list of of your own symbols and images that you can then drop on any page. This will probably not make it into the first release, as it would delay me from releasing the update.

The ability to add your own BMP's would be great - as I quite often sing from chorus music that has multiple lines and I quite often have to switch from line to line with the way that this breaks up = so having the ability to stamp my own BMP file at points at which I change lines (so I could easily follow the bouncing ball, as it were) would be great

I also like using my own symbols to higlight particular parts that I find difficult to sing etc. so that would be useful there also.

---

Also Booze (or anyone else that wants to comment), for highlighting, would it be better to be able to just draw a box around the section you want to highlight, or do you want to just use freeform drawing to drag over things?

Thinking of classical music like Chopin in your example, I think it could be
easier marking with freeforms, than with boxes. Sometimes notes go up and down outside the systems so it could happen, that at the beginning you have a very big box, where you need only a small one. Perhaps it would be possible, to rotate boxes in free degrees, so you don't have always horizontal boxes.
I don't know if this is possible in PDFs with sheet music, but highlighting difficult sections or solos would be a great feature. I use it often in RepliGo Reader to mark important things in texts.

I think the free form highlight would be the best default. As I mentioned before I tend to sing second soprano (which isnt always written) which means that i can find myself jumping from the Alto to the Sop stave and back again - free form highlight to be able to actually highligh the particular notes and words that I sing would be the default that I would want.

Also if it is possible to change the opacity and colour of the highlighter itself - some sheet music that I have is lighter than other - and would therefore need a more transparent highligter.

I am excited about this update - hope this feedback is helpful

[Zubersoft]

I made sure to include the ability to change the transparency by adjusting the alpha. I also spent a considerable amount of time this weekend getting the free form drawing to work the way I wanted it to, as I know a lot of people plan on using it as the default mode. I posted an update at the beginning of this post, so anyone that wants to beta test, please send me an email with the pertinent information. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!