[Maddcow]

Hi all
New user to MobileSheets but I've been using forScore since v1.0.  I just wanted to confirm my understanding of a few things with MS:

1. Am I correct that audio files can't be linked directly from my iPad's Music app i.e. audio files can only be linked from files stored somewhere on the iPad? (Context: with forScore, you can link audio files from songs in the iPadOS Music app)
   
2. It doesn't appear to be possible to change the colour or appearance of Smart Buttons (apart from size)?
   
3. It doesn't appear to be possible to import metadata from forScore files? 
   

Cheers
Gary

[Zubersoft]

Hello Gary,

1. You are correct. I haven't really started digging into what is necessary to play back audio from the iPad Music App inside MobileSheets. This is certainly something I can look into adding at some point though.

2. Also correct. This is also something that I plan to address when time allows. I'm not sure yet whether I will add options to change the appearance of smart buttons, or if I will incorporate the annotations functionality somehow to allow buttons to be designed using the annotation tools. What kind of options are you looking for?

3. Unfortunately, I don't know the details of the forScore files, so I don't how to read the data out of them. I had reached out to forScore a long time ago about making our apps interoperable, but they ignored my email, so I'm guessing they didn't want to spend any effort on that. Without documentation on the file formats, there is no way for me to know how to extract the data. You can export PDFs with metadata from forScore though, and MobileSheets now supports reading PDF metadata, so that's one option for how to transfer things over.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Mike

[Maddcow]

Hi Mike
Thanks so much for the reply. Some clarification for you:

1. That's great news! Personally, I'd prefer not to have to transfer over 1GB of audio files to my iPad just so that I can use them with MS i.e. because I need to continue using forScore until such time that I'm 100% comfortable with using MS at gigs.
   
2. The issue with MS Smart Buttons is that they don't stand out on the page and tend to blend in with notation, text directions etc.  I wish I didn't have to say this but with forScore, the button colours can be customised and so they can be made to really stand out....there's no way you can miss buttons in forScore.
   
3. Unfortunately, I'm not surprised that you never heard back from the forScore dev.  I'm a forScore Pro subscriber - which is supposed to provide priority support - and yet I haven't received a single reply from at least 10 emails requesting support due to showstopping bugs that started with v14 when it was released in April, and this is why I'm now looking to move over to MobileSheets.  But back to my point 3: there doesn't appear to be a way to batch-export PDFs with metadata from forScore and/or no way to batch-import PDFs with metadata into MobileSheets; and with me having over 1500 PDF files with extensive metadata, this situation is looking to be either a dealbreaker, or extremely time-consuming at the very least.
   

Finally, I've found that the various header Tabs on the homescreen tend to go completely blank after using search, filters etc.  The only way I can view anything again is to close the app and restart it....which is a considerable issue when trying to get MobileSheets up and running for gigs. I've tried deleting/reinstalling MobileSheets as well as restarting my iPads, but this looks like it's a bug.

[Geoff Bacon]

forscore might deliberately not be providing an export with metadata as it locks you in to their app (I'm a cynic).

I thought there were some recent posts about importing with metadata but I'm not sure if this was a batch import.
Still, if you can't export the metadata from forScore then I guess you don't have any to import.

Re tabs being blank after searches/filters; are you sure that the filters aren't still active and just displaying no entries?
(in Library settings, there is a "Reset Filters after Exiting Group Editor" option)

Geoff

[Maddcow]

Hi Geoff
I think you’re absolutely right about the forScore dev wanting to lock users into their app. 

Re. blank tabs: yep, I’m 100% sure that all filters are inactive. I’ve tried everything but nothing resets the view except for closing/restarting the app.

[Zubersoft]

I'll see if I can reproduce what you are describing. Do I just need to activate some of the filters to see the headers go blank? If you can share a screenshot with mike@zubersoft.com, that would be great as well. 

I will do what I can to make it as easy as possible to move over to MobileSheets. I do support batch importing PDFs with metadata now (just enable Settings->Import Settings->Extract PDF Metadata), but you'd need to find a way to export all the PDFs from forScore. I looked through the documentation, and it doesn't really mention the ability to export PDF metadata. So you may be correct that there is no easy way to transfer over the metadata from forScore. If you can try using the forScore sharing features to export a PDF and send that PDF to mike@zubersoft.com, I can take a look at it to see if there is any metadata in it. 

I have a huge list of improvements I want to make, so the challenge is just in figuring out when to prioritize one feature over another. Adding additional formatting/coloring options for smart buttons could be a smaller effort if I keep the options limited, or it could turn into a much bigger effort if I really open up tons of possibilities with annotations and such (so that you can really customize the look however you want). I think trying to do it sooner with a more simple approach and fewer options is probably for the best, and I can just expand it over time to match what people need. 

Thanks,
Mike

[Maddcow]

Hi Mike
Re. blank tabs: 
1) If I open the app, the highlighted tab is Songs and I have 1,480 songs list. In the Search field, I select any of the dropdown items except for Name; because I don't have any other metadata, the filtered result is blank.  Then if I select Name or All Fields, the result remains blank. If I tap on the circled X at the very right hand side to clear the filters, it doesn't reset anything and the result remains blank.  The only way to see the songs again is to exit and restart the app.

I'll share/export a PDF and send you the file.

Thanks so much, Mike!

[Learux]

Welcome to the club, I think your username will be Happycow soon.

[Maddcow]

@Learux, haha.  Maybe.  It's still early days but I'm seriously impressed with how responsive @Zubersoft is....the COMPLETE and utter opposite of the forScore dev who simply ignores every communication.  Hopefully I'll be done with forScore if I can manage to migrate over 15 years of work to MobileSheets instead.

[BRX]

I'm a longtime MS user, first Android, then Windows and now on iOS, too. 

This topic interests me because I'd really like to know what forscore does better than MS. Out of pure interest I
also purchased forscore (just for comparison there's no chance I will ever depart from MS to any other app, even if
migration would be easy).

I'm no fan of Apple and iOs and I am using the iPad only because it is superior to my previous tablets in smoothness,
battery life and responsiveness to my bluetooth pager. I'm very happy that Mike kept his UI consistent to the other
platforms because my impression of forscore is like for iOs in general that it is unintuitive, restrictive and pricey.

It may be me, but IMHO iOS (and forscore) have a tendency never to work like I expect, hide features I'm looking for
at places I normally wouldn't look for or lack them entirely and restrict so many things (no connectivy to non-Apple devices,
extra sandboxes for each app and so on), so I never understood the appeal. (Never had such problems on Windows or Android).

I also dislike the subscription model of forscore for the advanced features. IMO Mike's MSP blows forscore out of the water
as it is already and forscore would be in serious trouble if they hadn't such a large user base who is accustomed to its workflow and
doesn't bother to compare and switch to the amount of work for the migration. 

And as you have noticed Mike's support and willingness to implement all the wishes of his users is without peers.

[Maddcow]

@BRX, I've been using fS for many, many years and for all of that time, it just worked.....until v14 was released in April this year which introduced critical bugs that only seem to affect certain users.  I've only mentioned the crashing bug in my previous posts but there are a number of other major bugs.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any pattern that we users can figure out as to why only certain people are affected and the dev has been 100% silent about what is going on.  In terms of the other bugs, these primarily relate to the inability to restore user libraries without losing all or the majority of annotations/page formatting/cropping etc.  I have my own theory which is that v14 was a major code rewrite and as such, the database of certain users' libraries has been permanently corrupted and the only way to move forward without errors is to build our libraries again from scratch.....which simply isn't feasible for those of us with many thousands of files and pages at stake.

MobileSheets is the only other application with a similar feature-set but my perspective is the opposite of yours i.e. it seems unintuitive, restrictive and a bit ugly as compared to forScore.  HOWEVER, it also has a number of features that fS doesn't have and I'm extremely impressed with Mike's responsiveness as the dev and so I'm keen to possibly move to MS instead.  As a professional full-time musician, I don't have time to waste on troubleshooting a buggy app which needs to work 100% of the time and if I can get that with MS, I'm sold.

In terms of the subscription aspect of fS: this doesn't get you much at all and certainly isn't worth it i.e. some additional stamps and some extra app icons.  It's supposed to also get you priority support but the dev hasn't replied to any of my last ~10 emails and hasn't replied to many, many other users either (per a large fS group on FB)....so there's certainly a considerable feeling of anger at the moment, especially with those users (like me) who are experiencing critical bugs.  

I only learnt 2 weeks ago that MS was now available for iPadOS and so I purchased it immediately.  Unfortunately, I'm experiencing a nasty bug with the filter view at the moment but at least Mike is looking into this.

[Zubersoft]

Maddcow - I have a fix in place for the filters issue so that will be addressed with the update which I'm going to push out over the weekend. As a workaround, you only need to switch the dropdown back to "All Fields", type a letter in, erase that letter, and then all of the songs should show up again. Also, as you are going through the app, if you have any suggestions/insight about improvements as a user coming over from forScore, please don't hesitate to share them. It will only help MobileSheets become a better app. I'm definitely aware that MobileSheets has a lot of room for growth when it comes to aesthetics - I haven't really been able to spend a lot of time on improving the appearance, as I've been focused on adding support for more platforms and adding new functionality. That's definitely one thing I want to focus on next year though, after I've tackled some of the bigger feature requests, because the appearance does matter to some users, as it helps them feel more confident about the quality of the app (even if it has very little to do with the actual functionality or reliability). I also am keenly aware of some of the usability issues that need to be improved (i.e. the need for a much better UI for the page ordering feature, and an automatic cloud sync feature). If there are things that are unintuitive to you or restrictive, feel free to post or email me about them, and I'll try to think of adjustments that can be made.

Thanks,
Mike

[Maddcow]

Mike, as I've already alluded to, I'm blown away by your responsiveness concerning MS.  You really leave the competition for dead!  Thank you 

[Jeffrocchio@gmail.com]

>It doesn't appear to be possible to import metadata from forScore files? <

fwiw - I am also moving over from forScore due to recent issues. And my sister also has a forScore 'pro' account and has also never got a response back about the issue I was experiencing.

Now, as to the metadata --

• forScore will not populate the PDF metadata when it exports them. However, you can have forScore export a CSV (think Excel) document with all the PDFs' metadata - one row in the worksheet per PDF document.
  
• Then, as Mike has said in a reply here, MobileSheets can now auto-populate metadata fields that are in the PDF docs.
  
• But now how do you get the needed metadata into the PDFs? Sadly, I can't say that I know of an easy, non-programming, way of taking forScore's exported CVS file and applying it to all your PDF docs so that you could import them into MobileSheet with the metadata.
  
• As for myself - I do occasionally make sheetmusic for myself, and do populate the metadata fields in the PDF docs when I do; which is working great with MobileSheets.
  
• I use a utility called exiftool to do this. This tool does have the ability to use a CVS doc as an input to it's command params to batch-populate PDF metadata. Note, tho, that exiftool is a command line tool only, no GUI for it. So you need to be comfortable with a terminal to use it. About a year ago I did look for a GUI based tool; but didn't find anything that met my needs. And I'd guess it's unlikely there is one that can also do a large batch populate operation using a CSV input file.
  
• I have close to 2000 scores in forScore and am in the process of trying to think through the best way for me to make use of all of the above to get them from forScore into MobileSheets in a one-time batch operation. It may be something on the order of a month before I get to it. But when/if I do I'll post my process and results here.
  

[BRX]

Well, it will be still a bit of manual work, but if you can export metadata from forscore as csv then you probably can use that (after adjusting the format and columns a bit) with MS' batch import feature which also uses csv to import metadata (or rather the songs creating the entries in MS including metadata). Doesn't work for annotations like markings etc. though (and I can't imagine a way possible ).

But if you have the metadata as csv you are already half (or 75 % or more) there. Just familiarize yourself a bit with the csv import. There are quite a lot useful posts about it in the forum.