It depends - do you want to have to rely on either the WiFi network or bluetooth to transfer complete images of every page before they can be shown on the second device? On a high resolution screen, each uncompressed rendered image can easily be 25 MB. Do you really want to have to wait for 25 MB to be transferred per page or would you like things to happen instantly on each device as each device has its own copy of the files? I prefer the latter, but I guess some people might prefer the former if they have a reliable and fast network connection. Also, annotations aren't stored in the files anyways, so in order to synchronize the annotations, I would still have to send over the annotation data. I don't see how that can be avoided, especially if I want to allow annotations on either device. It's actually significantly more complicated to implement if the right device only has copies of the images and not of the actual library itself. If I didn't send over raw images, and instead sent over the song information along with any files in use by the song, that reduces the amount of data that has to be transmitted, but now I have to significantly change the application behavior on the second device, as it needs to disable functionality based on whether it's displaying a song from a different device. And once again, I would still have to transfer the annotation data if any edits are performed.
In general, it's not particularly useful to just say "this other software supports what I want, so isn't that simpler?", because I don't know any of the details of their implementation, and whether that has any shortcomings or issues. Is forScore basically doing the equivalent of screen casting where it just displays images on the other device? Can that other device perform all functions normally like annotating or is it in a reduced-functionality state? From their own documentation:
When using Cue within forScore, navigating to a different file opens that same PDF on every connected device if they have a copy, and offers to send them one if not. The standalone Cue app doesn’t have its own music library, so we had to come up with a different way of working with files in this situation.
So it offers to send them the file. This is in contrast to what you said about forScore not sending the file. That certainly sounds like it's duplicating the file, just on a file-per-file basis. I also assume that means you can't make any edits to the library on the device running cue. You may be able to trigger link points and such, but you can't make any edits (annotating is obviously allowed as they implemented that specifically). This also sounds like it would only work well over WiFi - I can't imagine bluetooth would transfer the image data fast enough (correct me if I'm wrong). According to this (http://forscore.co/cue-feature/) they are using something Apple provides that combines both bluetooth and WiFi - so that's not something I can just openly utilize on Android and Windows 10.
If users want a mode similar to this where a separate application is running on the second device that allows them to only view pages and trigger link points and smart buttons, I can certainly work towards something like that in the future. It is a very different way of handling things than running MobileSheets on each device though, and there would be a lot of limitations on what could be done on the second device, which may be acceptable to some users. There would also be more delay in loading pages when compared to duplicating the library on each device, and you would be at the mercy of the WiFi network for pages showing up in a timely manner on the second device. Once I support simpler options for automatic synchronization and the ability to synchronize annotations when using the connect tablets feature, then users would be able to work with either option.
Mike
In general, it's not particularly useful to just say "this other software supports what I want, so isn't that simpler?", because I don't know any of the details of their implementation, and whether that has any shortcomings or issues. Is forScore basically doing the equivalent of screen casting where it just displays images on the other device? Can that other device perform all functions normally like annotating or is it in a reduced-functionality state? From their own documentation:
When using Cue within forScore, navigating to a different file opens that same PDF on every connected device if they have a copy, and offers to send them one if not. The standalone Cue app doesn’t have its own music library, so we had to come up with a different way of working with files in this situation.
So it offers to send them the file. This is in contrast to what you said about forScore not sending the file. That certainly sounds like it's duplicating the file, just on a file-per-file basis. I also assume that means you can't make any edits to the library on the device running cue. You may be able to trigger link points and such, but you can't make any edits (annotating is obviously allowed as they implemented that specifically). This also sounds like it would only work well over WiFi - I can't imagine bluetooth would transfer the image data fast enough (correct me if I'm wrong). According to this (http://forscore.co/cue-feature/) they are using something Apple provides that combines both bluetooth and WiFi - so that's not something I can just openly utilize on Android and Windows 10.
If users want a mode similar to this where a separate application is running on the second device that allows them to only view pages and trigger link points and smart buttons, I can certainly work towards something like that in the future. It is a very different way of handling things than running MobileSheets on each device though, and there would be a lot of limitations on what could be done on the second device, which may be acceptable to some users. There would also be more delay in loading pages when compared to duplicating the library on each device, and you would be at the mercy of the WiFi network for pages showing up in a timely manner on the second device. Once I support simpler options for automatic synchronization and the ability to synchronize annotations when using the connect tablets feature, then users would be able to work with either option.
Mike