[Zubersoft]

MobileSheets version 3.8.10 has been released on all platforms along with a new companion app update (version 3.2.0). This update fixes a lot of small bugs, adds some nice usability enhancements, and also adds important changes related to the library synchronization feature. In previous versions, MobileSheets was calculating hashes of files on the fly when needed in order to determine differences between devices (or with files in a cloud folder). This is a slow operation though, especially when dealing with larger files and could slow down the sync significantly if many changes were detected. In version 3.8.10, these hashes are now stored in the database and only recalculated if a file's last modified timestamp changes. This means that synchronizing to another device or a cloud folder is now significantly faster. The only caveat is that the first sync after updating may not be any faster if MobileSheets needs to calculate the hashes to store them in the database, but all future syncs after that should be much faster. Important adjustments were also made to the sync feature to no longer try to sync last modified timestamps for files between devices or a cloud folder, as this just led to the incorrect detection of files having changed. 

One thing to note is that, due to the database changes for the hash, this version of MobileSheets is incompatible with older versions. If you use any features like msf files, the connect tablets feature, the sync library feature, etc, you will want to make sure all devices are updated to version 3.8.10 at the same time. Similarly, this version of the companion app can only be connected to version 3.8.10 and higher of MobileSheets. 

The full list of changes can be found below:

Common Changes:

• Added file hashes to the database to significantly increase the speed of library synchronizations
  
• Tapping on a group name in the group editor will now bring up the rename dialog
  
• Added improved progress dialog for library backup/restore
  
• The notes dialog will now default to showing a song's notes if no setlist notes have been added
  
• Adjusted notes dialog UI to make it faster to switch between song and setlist notes
  
• Long pressing the notes icon will now display the notes popup
  
• Tapping the song title in the next song title bar will now skip to that song
  
• Fixed bug with lines being cut off in certain situations with text/chord pro files
  
• Fixed bug where changing the "Remove gaps between pages" setting would not refresh the layout of a text-based file
  
• Right-clicking a smart button with a mouse will now edit that smart button.
  
• Smart buttons are now highlighted when activated by a pedal action
  
• Tapping a smart button now adjusts which button is triggered next when using pedal actions to trigger smart buttons
  
• Added new RATING_STARS option for song title formatting which displays stars instead of a number
  
• Added new PAGE_COUNT option for song title formatting which displays the total number of pages in a song
  

Android v3.8.10

• Fixed bug where pages could be incorrectly shifted down after rotating a device
  
• Added confirmation prompt when deleting bookmarks
  

Windows v3.8.10

• Fixed bug where changing the audio output device (like when plugging in headphones) would cause the metronome to stop working correctly
  
• Fixed bug where pages could be incorrectly shifted down after rotating a device
  
• Hovering over a smart button in the smart buttons window will now highlight that button
  

iPadOS v3.8.10

• Fixed issue with the search textbox being too small on the library screen
  
• Fixed issue where changing the search dropdown would result in filters not working correctly
  
• Significantly improved rendering speed when annotating while fully zoomed in
  
• Fixed bug where files could still be placed in the Inbox folder and deleted unexpectedly when importing from other applications
  
• Improved processing of text files shared from the Guitar Pro app. MobileSheets will attempt to find a title inside the shared file and rename the file if one is found
  
• Fixed bug where pages would no longer be displayed if the option was enabled to force the single page display mode in the annotations editor
  
• Fixed bug with exporting files to OneDrive that could result in an incorrect failure message
  
• Fixed bug where under certain rare conditions, touch events would stop being recognized after switching between screens
  
• Added improved handling of OneDrive account authentication failures
  
• Split screen is now supported, which allows the window to be resized on MacOS.
  

Companion app v3.2.0

• Switched to a new installer framework to allow the use of newer development tools
  
• Added support for new hash database field
  
• Fixed positioning issue of auto-completion box when display scaling is greater than 100%
  

As far as the roadmap for the next few months, I'm working through a considerable number of changes for the next major update. I'm planning on adding a number of things including: 

• Face gesture support
  
• Support for the iPhone
  
• Split screen mode on iPadOS
  
• Chord diagrams and chord grids for chord pro files (along with a few other enhancements/fixes)
  
• Fixes/improvements for picture taking on some devices like the S8 Ultra 
  
• Annotation scaling (to allow scaling of freeform annotations)
  
• Fixed page sizes for text/chord pro files
  
• Basic PDF editing features (add/remove pages, combine files)
  
• Image correction for existing files
  
• An improved page order UI
  
• Support for additional chord pro directives (image, chordcolor, etc)
  
• A new window for quickly loading any songs listed on the last viewed library tab (with some basic support for traversing the tabs and groups)
  
• Addition of more custom groups, potentially unlimited depending on the implementation, and maybe a few more custom fields
  
• CSV improvements, both for importing many PDFs at once with a CSV as well as improvements for the existing functionality
  
• New option for two page display with cover page
  

I'm tackling a huge number of things, so it may take a bit to finish the changes for all of these across all platforms. I may also decide to release some features sooner instead of releasing one large update. I will most likely be reaching out to users who are interested in helping beta test changes to ensure things are stable with the huge number of changes being made. After these changes are complete, then I can start working on improvements like the song versioning feature, a slur tool, more dynamic annotation tools, automatic synchronization of annotations with the connect tablets feature, library storage isolation changes, support for moving songs between libraries, metrics, highlighting of played songs, dynamic scroll speed changes, groups of setlists, setlist archiving, improved filters and some UI improvements (material design 3). I also want to make the companion app available on all platforms by switching to a cross platform framework, and seeing if I can move the Windows version over to that same framework (which would make it possible to release a linux version of MobileSheets). I'm really excited for all of the improvements that are coming!

Mike

[McAroni]

Hi Mike, is the resize option for the snipping tool also on the list? That would be really great if you could resize pasted parts.

[Zubersoft]

I can certainly add that to the list, as I was going to work on annotation scaling, so it's kind of under the same umbrella.

Mike

[McAroni]

This would be great! Thanks!

[danielpiano]

Thank you for improving the annotation rendering speed. I very much appreciate it.

[Zubersoft]

You are very welcome! I was happy I could find a relatively easy fix.

Mike

[Oz Cello]

Mike, the new sync is fantastic. Each time I add a piece I have to run 16 syncs so this makes a huge difference for me. So much faster.

It looks like one of the recent updates has done something to the automatic cropping though. I loaded some new pieces the other day and the auto-crop wasn't working properly, barely cropping anything at all. I tried the auto-crop on some pieces that I'd imported previously using auto-crop and it added back in a lot of empty area. I checked the settings and aggressive cropping is still selected as it always has been. Any idea what's happening there?

[Zubersoft]

I definitely did not modify any of the code related to automatic cropping, so that's very strange that you are seeing a significant difference. If you want to share a copy of your library backup with mike@zubersoft.com, I can test this out, otherwise if you can export a single song/piece demonstrating this issue along with the exported settings (.mcf) under Settings->Backup and Restore->Export Settings, I can test out that one song/piece. Just to verify, is this on Android or Windows?

Mike

[Oz Cello]

I'll get an email to you later today - about to head to a gig. Android on Onyx Boox Max 3 (e-Ink version). I do all the importing on one tablet then sync to the other tablets (identical tablets/libraries) so I'll check the auto-crop on the others in case the glitch is specific to that tablet.
Guy

[Oz Cello]

Hey, no, my bad. The files I was auto-cropping all had barely-visible marks on the margins that must've been stopping the cropping. On files where there are no marks in the white space it still auto-crops the white space out as before. Apologies. And thanks again for the fast new sync.
Guy

[Skip]

Just a note on the time for the 1st sync [hash]. I have a pretty large library , 1+ G.  It took a little over 23 minutes to complete the DB transfer from the client [Samsung SMP900] to the server [Samsung S7+] vs about 7 minutes to a newer device [Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite]. I was about to cancel out when it finished. The DB transfer from server to client was fast [seconds] for both clients.
Is there a chance to have a blinking cursor to indicate the transfer is still in progress?

[Zubersoft]

One of my goals is to split the status into two parts - status for the current phase/step, and overall status. This will provide more insight into what MobileSheets is doing along the way. I think once I implement that, it will be easier to understand what is happening for certain activities that require a lot of time.

Mike

[Eng1958]

Hi, 
is there any additional description of this new option? Unfortunately I didn't find any hint. Are there some more of these options?  

  

• Added new PAGE_COUNT option for song title formatting which displays the total number of pages in a song
  

Thanks in advance 
Dieter

[Zubersoft]

That will display the combined total number of pages for all files in a song, and it respects the page order for each file. So if you use 5 pages from a 20 page PDF, this would display 5.

This is the full list of supported fields:

TITLE
ARTISTS
ALBUMS
GENRES
COMPOSERS
SOURCE_TYPES
CUSTOM_GROUPS
KEYS
SIGNATURES
CUSTOM
CUSTOM2
TEMPOS
DIFFICULTY
DURATION
RATING
YEARS
COLLECTIONS
PAGE_ORDER
FILE_NAMES
FILE_PATHS
AUDIO_NAMES
AUDIO_PATHS
AUDIO_TITLES
AUDIO_DURATIONS
FILE_COUNT
CREATION_DATE
SONG_LAST_MOD
FILES_LAST_MOD
SONG_ID
SORT_TITLE
NUM_OF_PAGES
PAGE_COUNT
RATING_STARS
CAPO
SETLIST_NOTES
SONG_NOTES
MIDI_COMMANDS

Mike

[SteveDT123]

Looking forward to face gesture support! Thanks for the great work. If I can throw a +1 somewhere for an easy measure counting annotation feature that would be awesome. I guess there's a few possibilities for this feature. Here's two thoughts I had:
1) click somewhere and it puts a number using the formatting of the current text tool and increments the measure number so that when I click next it puts the next number. So that way you can just click click click to get measure counters 1, 2, 3. You can reset the sequence manually by holding down the click for 1 second (which resets and inserts the 1 of the reset sequence
2) alternate/complimentary but more complex let me click the start measure and end measure and it automatically finds the measure boundaries and annotates measure numbers 1-n for that span of measures. The OCR to find measure boundaries sounds like a fun problem to solve! 

Thanks for the consideration!