[RoSong]

Hi - previously annotated text has somehow changed size/spacing and I can't get it back to how it was. I noticed it a couple of days ago. To my knowledge, I haven't changed anything.  Sorry so long ... 

Background: I'm using one of new ipad air 13" (on ios 17) since May. I transferred everything over from an old out-of-space Air 2 (on ios 15) and have been using MS 3.8.4 since that update came out. I just updated to 17.6, but I updated after I noticed this behavior.

Details: I have annotated many sheet music PDFs to make the lyrics and chords easier to read. I've spent many hours spacing the lyric syllables to match the existing ones, so each lines up with the note it goes with.

This has been working brilliantly for months, on the old ipad and the new one since May. I have had no issues with the font size changing, even when the ipad is rotated. I always play and sing from portrait view and usually keep the orientation locked (on the ipad itself, not in the app). On occasion, when the app has changed to landscape, the text adjusts and then adjusts back when "righted" back to portrait view.

A couple of days ago, I noticed that all of these texts are squished together, ending sooner than the actual music line. This is also affecting many songs in which I used text to write in the chords. (Songs on which I used chord stamps are not affected, just the lyrics in those cases.)  

What I just noticed, is that everything matches in landscape mode. So it seems to have stuck somehow, then shrinks down too much when trying to adjust back to portrait. Anyway, the lines on all songs are consistent in looking correct in landscape and looking too short in portrait.

Things I tried that did not work:
* I tried closing MS and reopening.
* Turned off ipad and back on. 
* I updated to 17.6.
* I did the advanced restore from a recent auto-backup.
(Unfortunately, I didn't have a recent manual backup and I would've lost quite a few songs that had been added and annotated.)
* I tried both checking and unchecking the "scale tool sizes in landscape orientation." I'm pretty sure it was checked as default.
* I tried unchecking auto size in the font setting popup, when selecting a textbox. 

It doesn't work to just change the font size to stretch the text out again. It's just not matching up, like I had it before, plus the font increases height-wise, as well, and doesn't fit well into the space between the staves. And the text box remains stretched out at the end and its not possible to resize it back to the text size, even with using the Pencil and dragging the endpoints. It tries to resize the entire text. I wish I had a record of what font size each of these songs was set to initially, to see if the number changed, but I don't. 

I have increased the font on a couple of songs and unchecked the auto-size button in the popup. As I said, it's not perfect, but at least it's closer in the ballpark to the right length. I'm afraid to change very many until I know what the issue is, because it could just keep changing on me. 

I don't understand how this could happen out of the blue, when there hasn't been any MS update. And it shouldn't be the ios update because it's been working fine, since May.

I was ready to post this question when I paused and tried some other things.

A few days ago I disabled the auto iCloud backups, so my devices aren't connected or syncing with each other. So I checked the older, smaller ipad. Fornuately, the songs look fine. I can rotate either way and they look great in both views. And I did notice that the auto-size box is unchecked in the text popup on it.

Although, I haven't updated it since using my larger newer device, and it's missing quite a few songs and annotations. I started embedding the annotations in each affected song that's available on it and uploading each song to google drive, so I can swap files on a good amount of them, if nothing else works.

Questions: 
If I back up an msb from Feb (my most recent), I will lose a lot of songs. If I leave it, I am going to have to redo every single line of lyrics on 80 songs and in addition, every line of chords as well on about 50 of those.

(If I do the backup of the Feb. msb and it's still messed up, can I redo by choosing the recent auto db again?)

If I copy one of the recent auto-backups to an outside location and reinstall MS, can the auto db be used to put the library back in place?

I saved msf setting files from each ipad, if it would help to look at those. Do you think it would work to save the older ipad's msf file onto the newer one with the problem?

[DeArmin]

Hi - previously annotated text has somehow changed size/spacing and I can't get it back to how it was. I noticed it a couple of days ago. To my knowledge, I haven't changed anything.  Sorry so long ... 

Background: I'm using one of new ipad air 13" (on ios 17) since May. I transferred everything over from an old out-of-space Air 2 (on ios 15) and have been using MS 3.8.4 since that update came out. I just updated to 17.6, but I updated after I noticed this behavior.

Details: I have annotated many sheet music PDFs to make the lyrics and chords easier to read. I've spent many hours spacing the lyric syllables to match the existing ones, so each lines up with the note it goes with.

This has been working brilliantly for months, on the old ipad and the new one since May. I have had no issues with the font size changing, even when the ipad is rotated. I always play and sing from portrait view and usually keep the orientation locked (on the ipad itself, not in the app). On occasion, when the app has changed to landscape, the text adjusts and then adjusts back when "righted" back to portrait view.

A couple of days ago, I noticed that all of these texts are squished together, ending sooner than the actual music line. This is also affecting many songs in which I used text to write in the chords. (Songs on which I used chord stamps are not affected, just the lyrics in those cases.)  

What I just noticed, is that everything matches in landscape mode. So it seems to have stuck somehow, then shrinks down too much when trying to adjust back to portrait. Anyway, the lines on all songs are consistent in looking correct in landscape and looking too short in portrait.

Things I tried that did not work:
* I tried closing MS and reopening.
* Turned off ipad and back on. 
* I updated to 17.6.
* I did the advanced restore from a recent auto-backup.
(Unfortunately, I didn't have a recent manual backup and I would've lost quite a few songs that had been added and annotated.)
* I tried both checking and unchecking the "scale tool sizes in landscape orientation." I'm pretty sure it was checked as default.
* I tried unchecking auto size in the font setting popup, when selecting a textbox. 

It doesn't work to just change the font size to stretch the text out again. It's just not matching up, like I had it before, plus the font increases height-wise, as well, and doesn't fit well into the space between the staves. And the text box remains stretched out at the end and its not possible to resize it back to the text size, even with using the Pencil and dragging the endpoints. It tries to resize the entire text. I wish I had a record of what font size each of these songs was set to initially, to see if the number changed, but I don't. 

I have increased the font on a couple of songs and unchecked the auto-size button in the popup. As I said, it's not perfect, but at least it's closer in the ballpark to the right length. I'm afraid to change very many until I know what the issue is, because it could just keep changing on me. 

I don't understand how this could happen out of the blue, when there hasn't been any MS update. And it shouldn't be the ios update because it's been working fine, since May.

I was ready to post this question when I paused and tried some other things.

A few days ago I disabled the auto iCloud backups, so my devices aren't connected or syncing with each other. So I checked the older, smaller ipad. Fornuately, the songs look fine. I can rotate either way and they look great in both views. And I did notice that the auto-size box is unchecked in the text popup on it.

Although, I haven't updated it since using my larger newer device, and it's missing quite a few songs and annotations. I started embedding the annotations in each affected song that's available on it and uploading each song to google drive, so I can swap files on a good amount of them, if nothing else works.

Questions: 
If I back up an msb from Feb (my most recent), I will lose a lot of songs. If I leave it, I am going to have to redo every single line of lyrics on 80 songs and in addition, every line of chords as well on about 50 of those.

(If I do the backup of the Feb. msb and it's still messed up, can I redo by choosing the recent auto db again?)

If I copy one of the recent auto-backups to an outside location and reinstall MS, can the auto db be used to put the library back in place?

I saved msf setting files from each ipad, if it would help to look at those. Do you think it would work to save the older ipad's msf file onto the newer one with the problem?

Hi, I am having a similar issue with my Android devices.
I made various annotations with my tablet. When I use the backup on my mobile phone, most of them have gone. I wanted to put this up for discussion in the forum as well, but wanted to wait for the next update, maybe it's fixed there. Two sample photos attached. One from the tablet, the other from the mobile phone.

[Zubersoft]

It would definitely help to have either a .msb file or a few .msf files so I can take a look at what you are working with to fully understand the situation. In your second post, it's not clear to me whether that is a PDF or a text/chord pro file, as that will have large impacts on the way the page is rendered (and the positioning of annotations). The next update will add an option to have fixed page sizes for text/chord pro files, which is how you can ensure something renders identically across devices. You can email any files you want to send to mike@zubersoft.com (or share a link to files in the cloud).

One thing that would help to know is - did you create the text annotations in portrait, or in landscape? Some of the information that is stored will be different depending on this, so it would help to know while trying to guess at what might have happened.

Thanks,
Mike

[DeArmin]

It would definitely help to have either a .msb file or a few .msf files so I can take a look at what you are working with to fully understand the situation. In your second post, it's not clear to me whether that is a PDF or a text/chord pro file, as that will have large impacts on the way the page is rendered (and the positioning of annotations). The next update will add an option to have fixed page sizes for text/chord pro files, which is how you can ensure something renders identically across devices. You can email any files you want to send to mike@zubersoft.com (or share a link to files in the cloud).

One thing that would help to know is - did you create the text annotations in portrait, or in landscape? Some of the information that is stored will be different depending on this, so it would help to know while trying to guess at what might have happened.

Thanks,
Mike

Hi Mike,
in my case it is a txt-file. I have create the annoation in portrait format.

[Zubersoft]

Until the next update is available, it is not possible to transfer a .txt file between devices with annotations and have those annotations show up identically on each device. Once the option is available in 3.9.0 to set fixed page sizes for text files, you will be able to accomplish this.

Mike

[RoSong]

Hi - all of mine are PDFs and annotated in portrait mode. Mike, I have just sent 4 emails. I didn't know how to get them all together, sharing from MS and two devices. I've sent msfs of 8 songs each, one set from the old ipad with no issue, and the same songs from the new ipad. I also sent an mcf from each ipad to compare the settings. 

Hope it helps.

[RoSong]

I have found a resolution and want to give an update. As a recap, the issue was my annotated lyrics on a pdf would shift when changing from portrait to landscape and back again, the words would shrink or stretch and then not ever go back to the right spacing, no longer matching the notes.

I seem to have fixed it ...

I noticed one hymn (that has no annotations) was shrunk width-wise in a funny way. I knew that it didn't used to look that way. 

I looked at the file and it was part of a pdf book and so I checked the cropping. In the original book, there were two short songs on one page and I had hidden the song on the top half of the page to show just the one half-page song. I reset the cropping and saw that the song was on the bottom half of the page and it wasn't compressed. When I re-cropped, it compressed again. That's when I discovered the fit-screen setting. The scale mode was set on fit width. When I changed the scale to fit screen, the hymn didn't compress itself width-wise. To clarify, this song was compressing itself. There were no annotations on it.

However, it seems that I had activated the fit-width setting for all songs. I didn't notice because the full-page songs didn't look any different on the screen, but apparently it does affect some annotations, text in paticular. When I changed the default for all songs back to fit screen instead of fit width, the songs with the lyric and chord text annotations seem to have fixed themselves. They are all resized back to my original sizes and spacings. Yay!

Since I always play and sing from portrait mode, I have not checked how they look in landscape and if there's still a problem switching. I'm not planning to switch it, just in case! 

There may still be a need to adjust the code, so it doesn't stick one way on the other when shifting between portrait and landscape, especially if the fit width setting is used.

But I am thrilled that the fit-screen setting has caused all of those lines to go back to where I had originally set them, saving me from redoing 80 plus songs.

[Zubersoft]

Thanks for sharing the solution you found. The way text annotations are scaled is by scaling the font size based on the scaling of the page. This ensures that the text scales without a loss in quality. While I did testing to verify that this works across different page sizes, I wasn't studying it at a pixel level to know if it scaled linearly. So I'm not sure if that's why you saw the text annotations being slightly off with "Fit Width" scaling, as that would change the font size by a different amount compared to "Fit Screen". "Full screen" is quite problematic in this regard as scaling the font size won't work for different scaling amounts in the X and Y axis, so alignment issues can occur if that is used.

Mike