08-11-2020, 11:42 PM
I've been using MobileSheets for a few weeks now to read choral music on my Surface Go 2. For the most part, it's really impressive software and works very well. I've got the Surface model with a faster processor (m3) so it is generally quick and responsive. But I've found a few small problems.
Page Turns:
It seems like page turns aren't very reliable. I'm using purely touch interface, either tapping the sides of the screen or swipe gestures. If I try to test this and turn a bunch of pages, it always seems to work well. But when actually reading music where I'm flipping pages once or twice a minute, many times it doesn't work.
It's entirely possible that page turns while sight-reading difficult music might be distracting enough that I'm not doing nice clean taps and gestures. I understand that if the swipe isn't long enough or goes a bit crooked, it's not registered, or if I tap but slide a bit, it doesn't count as a tap. But even when I'm being careful it doesn't always seem to work. I can also usually see that Windows has registered the taps because it draws a small circle where I tapped.
Three Finger Tap:
I have the three-finger tap gesture set to open Annotation mode, but it seems like even when being careful, this only works abou 70% of the time. 20% of the time nothing happens, and 10% of the time, it just brings up the header and footer (like a one-finger tap). Again, I could be making sloppy gestures sometimes, but generally Windows draws three circles where I'm tapping, so I'm sure Windows is detecting the three taps.
Also, most times when hitting Cancel to leave annotation mode, it goes straight back to full-screen reading mode, but occasionally it shows the header and footer, so I need to tap again to go back to full-screen.
Drawing with Pen:
I also have a Surface pen for drawing annotations using the Pen tool. While drawing, every few seconds the line stops updating for a second, and when it starts again, it misses all the movement that happened in between.
When using it normally to make small annotations, is just seems like some of the lines or letters I draw get skipped, but I can test it by just drawing circles continuously, and it's clear that about every 5-6 seconds, it just freezes and stops recording the pen input for about a second.
I've used several other pen drawing apps (Sketchable, SketchBook, Concepts), and never noticed this behaviour in any of them. I have no other programs running, and I can't see any spikes in processor usage in the Task Manager.
Annotations:
There are some other quirks with annotations, but I read that this is currently being overhauled, so I can wait to see how the new system works.
Anyway, I can investigate the issues further or capture recordings of some of these problems, if that would be helpful.
Page Turns:
It seems like page turns aren't very reliable. I'm using purely touch interface, either tapping the sides of the screen or swipe gestures. If I try to test this and turn a bunch of pages, it always seems to work well. But when actually reading music where I'm flipping pages once or twice a minute, many times it doesn't work.
It's entirely possible that page turns while sight-reading difficult music might be distracting enough that I'm not doing nice clean taps and gestures. I understand that if the swipe isn't long enough or goes a bit crooked, it's not registered, or if I tap but slide a bit, it doesn't count as a tap. But even when I'm being careful it doesn't always seem to work. I can also usually see that Windows has registered the taps because it draws a small circle where I tapped.
Three Finger Tap:
I have the three-finger tap gesture set to open Annotation mode, but it seems like even when being careful, this only works abou 70% of the time. 20% of the time nothing happens, and 10% of the time, it just brings up the header and footer (like a one-finger tap). Again, I could be making sloppy gestures sometimes, but generally Windows draws three circles where I'm tapping, so I'm sure Windows is detecting the three taps.
Also, most times when hitting Cancel to leave annotation mode, it goes straight back to full-screen reading mode, but occasionally it shows the header and footer, so I need to tap again to go back to full-screen.
Drawing with Pen:
I also have a Surface pen for drawing annotations using the Pen tool. While drawing, every few seconds the line stops updating for a second, and when it starts again, it misses all the movement that happened in between.
When using it normally to make small annotations, is just seems like some of the lines or letters I draw get skipped, but I can test it by just drawing circles continuously, and it's clear that about every 5-6 seconds, it just freezes and stops recording the pen input for about a second.
I've used several other pen drawing apps (Sketchable, SketchBook, Concepts), and never noticed this behaviour in any of them. I have no other programs running, and I can't see any spikes in processor usage in the Task Manager.
Annotations:
There are some other quirks with annotations, but I read that this is currently being overhauled, so I can wait to see how the new system works.
Anyway, I can investigate the issues further or capture recordings of some of these problems, if that would be helpful.