[itsme]

I'm currently working on transferring my library from my current HP Detachable (WIn10) to my new Boox Tab Ultra C (Android).
I copied all the files and folders of the songfiles in the MobileSheets directory, then I copied the mobilesheets.db. That's how I planned to work in future: let GoogleDrive synchronize the song files and copy only the database manually.
Because of relative paths that works fine, at least in general. But, especially for ChordPro files it turned out to be more work as expected.
Because of different screen resolutions (?) the fonts are displayed in different size. This leads to different line breaks and that spoils the whole layout.

I'm probably not the first one facing this effect, so I hope for some hints and advice how others have handled that.

For further investigation I copied the database from the HP Detachable to all my other available tablets. Here are the results:
               
Screen resolutions are
HP Detachable: 1280 x 800
Boox Tab Ultra C: 2480 x 1860, color 1240 x 930
Huawei MediaPad T5: 1920 x 1200
Acer Iconia A1-830: 1024 x 768
The numeric values of the font sizes as shown by MobileSheets Text Display Settings are unchanged, as expected.

I don't understand the dependancy of the font sizes, maybe there already exists a built-in a correction.
And I don't understand why a lyrics size of 27 in Text Display Settings is shown as the same size as an annotation with font size 13.
Another side effect: annotations are not linked to the text, but fixed at a certain page position. This is probably the cause that the blue annotation at the bottom of AllForMeGrog_HPDetach.jpg disappears completely on AllForMeGrog_boox.png as it was on a part of the page that is not shown anymore.

Would a different workflow, e.g. using MobileSheets' sync feature instead of syncing the files and copying the database, give better results? But I definitely want to be able to access my files directly.

[sciurius]

I had a similar problem when I added a Samsung Galaxy Tab S7FE next to a S4. Both displays are 1600x2560 but have different PPI and the songs came out different.

I solved it by modifying the S7FE: Developers Options > Grapics > Minimum Width = 752 to 711 (the value on the S4).

This video helped me: deleted .

[Zubersoft]

This has come up before and it's due to how text file and chord pro files are rendered. MobileSheets will use the entire screen for laying out the file, and each device can have a different screen density, so it's not just about resolution (on some devices, they can fit more pixels on the screen with the same resolution). This leads to different layouts on different devices. The proposed solution for this (which has been planned for quite some time but I haven't had time to focus on it), is to allow a fixed page size to be specified for text and chord pro files. MobileSheets will then render to that size, and then scale the image up or down to fit the screen. This would allow annotations to also maintain their relative positions correctly, and would make it easier to go between devices. It will mean that the file could show up blurrier on one device than another if you use too low of a page size though. 

Annotations are just anchored to a fixed position on the page - they are not attached to anything on the page. So if the layout changes, the annotations are going to remain where they were. Trying to anchor annotations to particular words in the file is a can of worms, because the user can just edit the file, and now the annotation wouldn't have an anchor point anymore. Also, as the layout changes, the annotations could potentially have to switch pages, requiring database updates every time and other potential issues.  As mentioned above, a fixed page size would resolve this issue. 

There is one other piece to the puzzle that I have not mentioned yet. In order for annotations to be positioned in somewhat the same spot in chord pro files, I also save the dimensions of the page that was used when the annotation was first created. This means that if you load that song on another device that will use a different page size, MobileSheets will scale the annotation in an attempt to keep it in the same position across devices. This generally has worked fairly well in my testing - I can go from a smaller tablet to a larger tablet, and the annotations are still positioned correctly as long as the page layout hasn't significantly changed.

Although it's not optimal, if you need a workaround in the meantime, you would have to convert those files to PDF. That's about the only way to ensure the page looks identical across devices with the current design.

Mike

[itsme]

Thank you Johan and Mike for your helpful hints.

@Johan: are you sure that you posted the right YouTube link? It points to "Fix Flashing Pink / Purple Screen on Samsung Galaxy S7"
It's not important for me as I found what you are talking about, just to avoid confusing others.

@Mike: "rendering to a fixed page size" seems to be the way to go. Any idea when that will be released? Is it part of the upcoming ChordPro rework?
I already use Johan's reference implementation to convert ChordPro to PDF as soon as I want to use ChordPro features that are not yet supported by MobileSheets. But I prefer native ChordPro whenever possible because of the possibility to transpose on the fly.

[Zubersoft]

Yes, it was tentatively put on the list with the upcoming chord pro changes. However, things are a little in flux with the timing and what features will be rolled out as part of v3.9.0 versus 3.8.x, as users are eager for individual features that are being added (like face gestures), so I may release a few more smaller updates before the big update.

Mike

[itsme]

I think I can wait for V 3.9 before I switch my 'main device' from the HP Detachable to the Boox.

[sciurius]

Sorry, I must have put down the wrong video link. When you search for Developers Options > Grapics > Minimum Width you'll find other videos.

(IIRC playing with the width settings gave me the pink screen, hence the link to that video.)

[basd]

I had to deal with the same problem, because I bought a fleet of used Lenovo Yoga2s, but also a couple of used Lenovo Thinkpads. The Yoga2s have high density screens and the thinkpads density so low they are basically "obsolete".

My most recent solution was to degrade the screen resolution on the Yoga2s to the same resolution as the Thinkpads. This worked out because I don't use the Yoga2s for anything else, so native high resolution is not necessary -- although it took me awhile to realize I could solve my problem by doing this.  In fact, everyone is glad for the larger text. This was necessary, as I change the pages with the server laptop for everyone and it has been much easier since I just made the resolution the same on all the devices. (It's also necessary to setup the correct default page margins and column margins so that all the devices will be displaying the text the same.)

But here are a couple of tricks I employed before that -- (1) I went to a lot of trouble to adjust the default display parameters on each device to visually "almost" match the on-screen display of both types of devices. There were a few issues and so on some songs, the page breaks would not match up, they would be off by a line or so -- which I could fix by tediously adjusting the display parameters for the individual song. And, after synchronizing, it was occasionally necessary to apply the device default parameters "to all songs". But, I also discovered I could put a {np} (new page) command and then the break would come at the same place. (Which needs to be checked, because one can also end up with a one-line page by putting the {np} in the wrong place...)

I don't know if there would be some magical method at the programming end to get the chordpro files to display the same on screens of different resolution.  It was challenging to come up with a fleet of devices at an (almost) affordable price that would all display the same to everyone in the band. And, I also have the library synchronized to an Android, a couple of Windows tablets and an iPad. For those users, it's definitely "turn the pages yourself ..."

[Zubersoft]

I explained some of my plans to address this at the beginning of my post above: https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...l#pid44795

I'm going to let users assign fixed page sizes to their chord pro files (along with an option for a global default). This will allow pages to render identically across devices. So there will be a solution soon once I'm able to focus on this.

MIke

[itsme]

Great. I'm waiting...

[basd]

@Mike - I did read your post above, and definitely not complaining ... MobileSheets has a very rich feature set, and you are quite active implementing improvements!