04-08-2021, 07:38 PM (This post was last modified: 04-08-2021, 07:58 PM by eBug.)
I'm with version 3.0.10 e-ink version.
I note two different interfaces, with different options to import files whether one is importing a song, or adding a file into a song.
Options to import a song are:
Local file
Dropbox
Google Drive
External/Cloud
Options to import file withing a song are:
Local file
Dropbox
Google Drive
Can we unify these menus?
The External/Cloud actually allows me to import a file from any cloud storage (through Android file manager interface), i.e. Nextcloud, that was a feature that was discussed in another thread.
But for now I can't import a file from Nextcloud within a song. An access to android file manager doesn't seem difficult to insert there.
04-09-2021, 03:01 AM (This post was last modified: 04-09-2021, 03:02 AM by Zubersoft.)
If you look in the song editor, there are a series of icons on the right side of the list:
Folder - Local import
Gallery type icon - Use the Google file picker, the same as Import->External/Cloud
Camera - Take a picture and import that
Cloud - Direct access to the various cloud services
Blank page - Add one or more blank pages
Text editor - Adds a chord pro file
So I don't really see an issue here. You just need to tap a different icon, and I would argue that is actually more convenient than collapsing that option into a dropdown that would appear if you tapped the folder icon, for example.
04-09-2021, 09:19 AM (This post was last modified: 04-09-2021, 09:27 AM by eBug.)
(04-09-2021, 03:01 AM)Zubersoft Wrote: If you look in the song editor, there are a series of icons on the right side of the list:
Folder - Local import
Gallery type icon - Use the Google file picker, the same as Import->External/Cloud
Camera - Take a picture and import that
Cloud - Direct access to the various cloud services
Blank page - Add one or more blank pages
Text editor - Adds a chord pro file
So I don't really see an issue here. You just need to tap a different icon, and I would argue that is actually more convenient than collapsing that option into a dropdown that would appear if you tapped the folder icon, for example.
Mike
I know those options... But the 'Cloud' options in the song editor only lists: Dropbox and Google Drive. I miss the External/Cloud option (available in song import), which gives me access to Nextcloud.
04-10-2021, 03:38 AM (This post was last modified: 04-10-2021, 03:48 AM by Zubersoft.)
As I listed, the second icon that looks like a gallery icon brings up the Google file picker, which is what you want to use, not the cloud icon. That is identical to what happens when you click Import->External/Cloud. Are you saying that if you click that icon you can't import from something you expect to be able to? That doesn't make a lot of sense, but I can look into that if that is what you are saying. The reason I set it up that way is that the cloud icon is linked to cloud services that MobileSheetsPro has integration with. The Google File Picker can be used to import from other applications on the device, not just cloud services. So it would be incorrect for me to group that under the cloud icon. If none of this is intuitive, I can remove that second icon and when you tap the folder icon, it will then display a dropdown with "Local File" and "External/Cloud" if that would be preferred. Or I can remove both that icon and the cloud icon, and just group everything under the folder icon to more closely match the import dropdown on the main menu. Some users have disabled the cloud integration for services they don't use, which means that when they tap the cloud icon it uses the only service that is enabled, meaning they can access it with a single tap instead of two. So this would be less convenient for those users.
As far as backup/restore, that is a different beast altogether. When a destination is selected for a backup, I need to be able to copy a file to that destination, and you can't use the Google File Picker to select a destination for saving a file. It just doesn't work that way - the file picker can only be used to pick an existing file in the file system or to pick a file through a different application on the device. Google does have an intent for selecting a folder to write to, but that does not support selecting a cloud destination, or a destination through another application. It can only be used to pick a folder on the local file system, which I already support through my own browser. With restoring a file, in theory I could try to support using the Google File Picker for that, but it forces me to go through a different API for accessing the file data. I'm not given a simple file path or anything nice like that, because the file may be provided through another application and/or the cloud. Instead, I'm given a cursor which lets me access properties of the file, including its data, but then reading the data is much slower than what is possible with direct file access. So I may look into supporting that at some point for the library restore, but it's a not a high priority for me at the moment as you can just copy the file to the device using an external application and then restore the library.
04-10-2021, 03:52 AM (This post was last modified: 04-10-2021, 06:01 AM by Zubersoft.)
Thinking about this some more, I may switch things up by changing the folder icon to a + icon, removing the external/cloud icon, the cloud icon, the blank page icon and the chord pro file icon, and just place all of those into a dropdown menu that is displayed when the + icon is tapped. So then there would just be two icons: the + icon and the camera icon. This does result in two taps for certain actions that only required a single tap before, but it means I can provide a text description in the dropdown to clearly describe what each option is. I can do the same on the audio tab, which is then more consistent. Thoughts?
(04-10-2021, 03:38 AM)Zubersoft Wrote: As I listed, the second icon that looks like a gallery icon brings up the Google file picker, which is what you want to use, not the cloud icon. That is identical to what happens when you click Import->External/Cloud. Are you saying that if you click that icon you can't import from something you expect to be able to? That doesn't make a lot of sense, but I can look into that if that is what you are saying. The reason I set it up that way is that the cloud icon is linked to cloud services that MobileSheetsPro has integration with. The Google File Picker can be used to import from other applications on the device, not just cloud services. So it would be incorrect for me to group that under the cloud icon. If none of this is intuitive, I can remove that second icon and when you tap the folder icon, it will then display a dropdown with "Local File" and "External/Cloud" if that would be preferred. Or I can remove both that icon and the cloud icon, and just group everything under the folder icon to more closely match the import dropdown on the main menu. Some users have disabled the cloud integration for services they don't use, which means that when they tap the cloud icon it uses the only service that is enabled, meaning they can access it with a single tap instead of two. So this would be less convenient for those users.
As far as backup/restore, that is a different beast altogether. When a destination is selected for a backup, I need to be able to copy a file to that destination, and you can't use the Google File Picker to select a destination for saving a file. It just doesn't work that way - the file picker can only be used to pick an existing file in the file system or to pick a file through a different application on the device. Google does have an intent for selecting a folder to write to, but that does not support selecting a cloud destination, or a destination through another application. It can only be used to pick a folder on the local file system, which I already support through my own browser. With restoring a file, in theory I could try to support using the Google File Picker for that, but it forces me to go through a different API for accessing the file data. I'm not given a simple file path or anything nice like that, because the file may be provided through another application and/or the cloud. Instead, I'm given a cursor which lets me access properties of the file, including its data, but then reading the data is much slower than what is possible with direct file access. So I may look into supporting that at some point for the library restore, but it's a not a high priority for me at the moment as you can just copy the file to the device using an external application and then restore the library.
Mike
You are right, the gallery icon actually brings up the Google File picker. I didn't even try, because I had been thinking that that icon would only serve for importing image files. So I can indeed import files from Nextcloud...Maybe having those two first icons doing mostly the same thing is a bit confusing (file manager + google file picker).
Regarding backup/restore, it's perfectly true you can't use the file picker to save a file. What most people do here, is using a share/send option, which basically open all the possible destinations for the file we're dealing with (i can send it to nextcloud, to gmail, or to telegram), this could be an interesting feature.
(04-10-2021, 03:52 AM)Zubersoft Wrote: Thinking about this some more, I may switch things up by changing the folder icon to a + icon, removing the external/cloud icon, the cloud icon, the blank page icon and the chord pro file icon, and just place all of those into a dropdown menu that is displayed when the + icon is tapped. So then there would just be two icons: the + icon and the camera icon. This does result in two taps for certain actions that only required a single tap before, but it means I can provide a text description in the dropdown to clearly describe what each option is. I can do the same on the audio tab, which is then more consistent. Thoughts?
Mike
This sounds good to me, keeping a common paradigm among different parts of the app.
Thanks for your dedication.
Eric.
eBug - the file manager and file picker aren't exactly the same thing, because with the file picker I actually have to download the file to a temporary location before it can be imported (even if selecting a local file) because of the way Google's API works. If you are managing your own files, for example, this will cause the file to have to be copied to the storage location.
As far as backup/restore, if I were to support share/send, I would still have to create the backup file first locally, then after that completes, the user could then select the app to share that gigantic file with, and I'm not even sure how well it would work to try to share a potentially several gigabyte file through that mechanism. Also, if you happened to cancel out of selecting an app to share after waiting for the entire backup file to be generated, the process would be canceled. That really doesn't sound like a great user experience, but I can't really avoid that because of how sharing works - you have to have the file you are going to share available before you can share it, and then I invoke Google's API to show you which applications you can share with. I can't just generate the file on the fly and stream the data to another application.
(04-10-2021, 10:00 AM)Zubersoft Wrote: eBug - the file manager and file picker aren't exactly the same thing, because with the file picker I actually have to download the file to a temporary location before it can be imported (even if selecting a local file) because of the way Google's API works. If you are managing your own files, for example, this will cause the file to have to be copied to the storage location.
As far as backup/restore, if I were to support share/send, I would still have to create the backup file first locally, then after that completes, the user could then select the app to share that gigantic file with, and I'm not even sure how well it would work to try to share a potentially several gigabyte file through that mechanism. Also, if you happened to cancel out of selecting an app to share after waiting for the entire backup file to be generated, the process would be canceled. That really doesn't sound like a great user experience, but I can't really avoid that because of how sharing works - you have to have the file you are going to share available before you can share it, and then I invoke Google's API to show you which applications you can share with. I can't just generate the file on the fly and stream the data to another application.
Mike
I'm also noting that when importing files into a song, the menu on the right side has two icons that basically leads to the same screen: the 1st one (folder icon) and the 3d one (cloud icon)
* I can press Cloud icon -> Google Drive -> Sd card or Folder icon ->Sd card and get to the same point.
These two icons from Import seem to have the exact same funcionality and sort of confuse the end user. Most apps out there (WhatsApp, Messenger, Gmail, ...) use the simpler well-know paradigm: File/Gallery/Camera.
I changed the UI for 3.1.0 to just have +, and under that it will display all the options. There is no longer a cloud icon, as I can just list Dropbox/Google Drive/OneDrive. I'm not going to remove these options because it's a lot nicer to go directly to what you want to connect to versus having to first go to the file browser which starts with the local file system, then tap the cloud icon, then tap the type of cloud provider. Additionally, in the Windows 10 version, due to how local file permissions work, I am forced to use Microsoft's file browser which doesn't provide me a mechanism to switch it over to import from the cloud. So for that version, I absolutely have to have different options for local file imports versus cloud imports, and it's better for Android to stay consistent with the Windows 10 version where possible. Other apps that have File/Gallery/Camera must be using Google's file picker for the "File" option, as I don't know how else they are allowing imports from the cloud, and that requires that you have the specific cloud application installed (i.e. Dropbox/Google Drive/OneDrive). So it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. I do appreciate your feedback though.
