[McConnor]

Hello,

I am not sure if I am simply holding it wrong but when trying to copy items from one layer to another (which I especially created for this purpose) I am getting all kinds of obscure errors:

* sometimes I can copy items but then there is no "paste" butten available
* Items suddenly appear in both layers even though i cut them and pasted them in another layer
* Once I got it just right and ticked the visability so that only the desired layer was visible - on export there were all layers visible in the pdf nonetheless...
* Next day when I came back to the song Layers and items were mixed up again (perhaps that happend during export)

All in all the layers system does not seem too suited for these operations or am I missing something.

All I wanted was to have to show up only some of the annotations while keeping all of them for other band setups... I guess this will be something "Versioning" will be adressing?

Greetings and Thanks for your help

[Zubersoft]

The paste option is only available if you have the selection tool active and you long press on the score. If you have used the copy or cut action, then you should always be able to paste. If you believe there are a series of steps that results in not being able to paste, please let me know if you can find a way to reproduce that, as I've certainly never seen that. Are you using the app in fullscreen mode on a tablet or in windowed mode on a PC?

Also please let me know if there are a series of steps to cut/paste and see annotations in multiple layers. I did just manage to find a way to reproduce a bug that involves creating an annotation in one layer, cutting and pasting that in another layer, and then using undo/redo. The annotation will be recreated in the wrong layer and then all sorts of problems occur after that.

Exporting currently exports all layers. Another user has asked for the ability to specify which layers should be exported, so that's something I will add when time allows. If users prefer, I can also just honor the visibility while exporting, but this does mean that users would have to explicitly go and turn the visibility on for all layers before exporting which they may forget to do.

Your use of the layer system seems fine - it just sounds like there are some issues that need to be fixed. Song versioning would also be another way to accomplish the same thing, but would avoid the export issues you are currently encountering. 

Mike

[McConnor]

Thanks for taking the time to clarify the process...

I believe I once used the "undo" feature - perhaps that caused the odd behavior.

As the items in question were lost during my attemps to paste them I will have to recreate them - luckily not too much.

Intuitivly I would have imagined the process of copying items like that:

Create a new layer 2
mark all desired items in layer 1
press copy
select layer 2 (becomes orange)
press paste
Items appear in both layers at the same location) (I could delete them in layer 1 if I wished to do so)

But somehow thats not how it works... I did long press on the score once and the inserted items were then not at their orignal location anymore and had to be shifted which is tedious...

As to exporting: I can see no common scenario where a user would create several annotations, makes some of those invisible and nonetheless wants all of them exported... At first glance honoring visability seems a good way to handle export. There might be a switch in the settings to always export all layers though...

[Zubersoft]

If you copy items in one layer and paste in another, you will certainly have copies of those annotations in both layers. If you used the "Cut" option, then the annotations should only show up in the active layer when pasted. If you are saying that pasting the annotations creates duplicates in the first layer, that would definitely be a problem, but I haven't seen that during my testing. As far as pasting, the annotations will be pasted based on the location of where you long press. This is so that, when pasting a single annotation, it will show up under your finger/stylus while pasting, which is what most users would expect. It gets a little more complicated with multiple selections, but the center point of all the selected annotations is calculated, and wherever you paste, the annotations will keep the same distance from that center point as before.

I'll see what I can do for only exporting the visible layers for the next update. I think that should be fine, because anyone who wants all layers exported can just make them all visible, but there is no way to exclude layers at the moment which is worse.

Mike

[McConnor]

Thank you Mike. I will check when reediting the song in question.

As to pasting: if the intention is to simply move the items from one layer to another (as in my case) the "long-press" solution is imho not ideal as it requires to meticulously realign the annotations. Why not add a "paste" button down in the layers menu (next to the arrows and grouping icon which will paste copied/cut content to the selected layer at the exact same location they were before? The "long-press" behavior could stay the same...

[Zubersoft]

I don't really want to add that icon there, as it's contextual and most users wouldn't think to look there for something related to copying/pasting. How about in the popup menu when long pressing, I just add a second option which is "Paste to original position" or "Paste to original location"? I could also change the wording for "Paste" to "Paste Here" to be more explicit. I'm open to suggestions on the wording if you think this would be acceptable. This also prevents the need for users to have the layers window up while copying/pasting while still giving them a way to paste to a different copy of a page or a different layer, as you can still select annotations from one layer and paste them in the active layer.

Mike

[McConnor]

That sounds like a good idea! It would then be a button with "Paste here" and a button with "Paste to original position".

The selected layer would be taken into account? Pasting to the original position would only make sense if the selected layer is not the original layer while pasting to another location (i.e. "here") could also serve the purpose of multiplying the annotation... Perhaps in the first case there needed to be a message like "cannot paste to original location on same layer"?

[Zubersoft]

I have to get translations for those in all 15 languages, so I may not be able to include this in the next update. It will probably make it into the update after that.

Thanks,
Mike

[McConnor]

I have to get translations for those in all 15 languages, so I may not be able to include this in the next update. It will probably make it into the update after that.

Thanks,
Mike

Well, it's not a matter of life or death so take your time... Thanks for considering it! This will be helpful... Greetings