[punkypangolin]

Hi all. Not sure if this is a bug or if I'm misunderstanding why/how it works, but…

On my iPad, I can use the Pencil to add notes using the little pen icon tool. Works great.

But the eraser seems to erase everything I've annotated. Or, more specifically, everything that I did with the pen tool without changing on/off the pen tool. If I write a bunch of notes, but want to erase just one word or pen stroke, it seems there's no way to do that (except via undo, which then undoes everything I did after the stroke I want to erase).

If I switch off the pen tool with each stroke, I can then erase individual strokes. But that's obviously horribly inconvenient.

Is this a bug, or is it because of how pen strokes end up getting stored / layered, so everything's treated as a single object? Is there a way around this? I've ended up accidentally erasing huge chunks of my charts / notes / lyrics and closing the editor accidentally afterwards (so there's no undo) a few times, and I'm realizing I need a better approach

Thanks!

[Zubersoft]

You have multiple options here depending on your preferred behaviors:

1) Tap the eraser tool, tap it again to show the options and then you can change the eraser mode. Change it to "Drag Across" and MobileSheets will only delete parts of the drawing that the eraser makes contact with.
2) Tap the three dots at the top right, then Settings and uncheck "Combine freeform annotations". Now each stroke is treated as an independent freeform annotation. This is less efficient but gives you more control over each stroke.
3) Change the eraser tool to "Drag box" and then you can draw a box around the things you want to delete. This will only delete part of the freeform annotation - not the entire thing.

Let me know if you run into issues with these or have any questions about them.

Mike

[punkypangolin]

Ah, thanks, Mike! I should have seen the little black triangle at the bottom, but didn't think to tap again.

That's great, but now a new related question: Is it possible to lock a layer? What I typically do is copy/paste lyrics into a text box on a blank page, then annotate on top of that. But all the eraser settings will erase all the text if the eraser overlaps any of the text box. I've been messing with the layers box, and I can see I can hide layers, but I'm having trouble figuring out locking objects, or moving one object (a text box) from one layer to another (to then hide, erase, unhide).

Thanks!

[Zubersoft]

It's not currently possible to lock a layer. That is something I'll need to add support for at some point. You can add a second layer, make that the active layer, and then the eraser should not erase anything on the inactive layers. I also don't have options to move annotations easily between layers (that's also on the list).

Mike

[itsme]

How about copy/paste the lyrics into a new text or ChordPro file and annotate on that?
A new file can be created in the song editor:
tap 'New' on the songs tab, tap the feather icon in the song editor, specify the filename
now you're already in the edit window of a newly created song and can paste your lyrics or start editing

[punkypangolin]

How about copy/paste the lyrics into a new text or ChordPro file and annotate on that?

Unless I'm wrong on this as well, if you do a ChordPro file, you can't do any other files. I'll often have a chart and a lyrics file, and then need to add handwritten annotations around the lyrics. (ChordPro files allowing the text to change size and go columnar is super neat but also gets really weird with annotations.)

So I don't think that'd work, but I might be misunderstanding what you mean. Always open to trying new things though

[itsme]

It's correct that ChordPro files cannot be combined with other file types in the same song.
In setlists, collections and so on MobileSheets can handle a mix of all supported file types.
And yes, when the formatting of a ChordPro song is changed you might be facing issues with the position of annotations.
I frequently use ChordPro and in case I use sophisticated ChordPro features I create PDFs with the ChordPro reference implementation 
https://github.com/ChordPro/chordpro/releases/
A great relatively new feature is the support of ABC sections within ChordPro files
https://www.chordpro.org/beta/directives-env_abc/
Lots of interesting features but by far not as simple as the workflow I described earlier in this thread. And with PDF export the possibility to transpose with a few clicks within MobileSheets is lost.

I hope that the announced support of chord grids and lowercase chord letters in MobileSheets is coming soon. Supporting ABC within ChordPro files also by MobileSheets would be a real game changer but is probably more complicated.

[Zubersoft]

Some work has been started on ABC files (someone volunteered to help a little bit with it), and it was possible to render an ABC file. However, we are utilizing a third party open source library, and that library is designed to be run as a standalone application, so additional work needs to be done to ensure that the library doesn't crash or close MobileSheets if an error occurs (as it's normally designed to just exit the application if an error happens while parsing a file). Once this code is properly implemented, I can then utilize it to render ABC sections within a chord pro file.

Mike

[itsme]

Great!