[Zubersoft]

A user notified me that stamp annotations that are created with the page scaling set to "Full screen" shift when you either switch the page scaling mode back to "Fit screen" or if you export the song. I have located the cause of this issue and have a fix in place. However, if I release an update with these fixes, it will cause any stamp annotations that users have created in the "Full screen" page scaling mode to shift on them, as they will be shifted to the correct position. The amount they will be shifted depends on how much the page is stretched (the more it's stretched vertically, the more the annotation will shift when corrected). Only stamp annotations are impacted (other annotation types are fine). I realize that this may be a huge problem for some users, as they could potentially have to adjust a lot of annotations. So I need some feedback. I can do one of two things:

1) Implement the changes as is and users will have to adjust their annotations if they've been using stamps with the full screen page scaling mode. I don't know how many users utilize the full screen page scaling mode and also use stamp annotations. It could be a small percentage of users

2) Only apply the changes to new annotations created from version 3.4.9 onward. Existing annotations will continue to be rendered in the incorrect position and the only way to fix annotations to have them positioned correctly would be to delete them and recreate them

I would really appreciate feedback from anyone that is impacted by this bug as to which approach is preferred. Also, this problem only occurs on Android - the code is implemented correctly in the Windows version.

Thanks,
Mike

[palosanto]

I use always full screen mode and have lots of stamps because I made fingering numbers as stamps as they are faster to apply than text.
Shifting everything would be a disaster.
However you said that stamps shift to the "correct" position when exporting a song or switching to fit screen.
I export songs often as pdf with annotations and they seem to remain in the same position as when I see them onscreen, I don't see any shift (unless it's just a couple of pixels and I wouldn't be able to tell).
I haven't noticed any shift switching to fit screen either ...

In any case, to be safe, I would prefer the second option.

Thanks,
Juan

[Zubersoft]

Thanks for the feedback. If you aren't seeing a shift when switching between full screen and fit screen page scaling, that means the shift is very small and almost impercetible. So even if I released the change using the approach with #1, you probably wouldn't see any visible change. This is a tough decision to make because while #2 is the safer approach by far, it means there is no way for users with the problem to easily fix their annotations. At least users with the problem from #1 can just adjust all of their stamp annotations on a page at once using the nudge tool if necessary. Having said that, if there are users like yourself who always use the full screen scaling mode have many annotations over hundreds of songs, that would be unacceptable for them to have to edit all their songs to account for this issue.  Those users would never be able to switch page scaling modes or export their annotations without issues though, so it may just be postponing an inevitable problem and then making it so that they can't even fix the issue easily in the future...

Mike

[palosanto]

Thanks for the feedback. If you aren't seeing a shift when switching between full screen and fit screen page scaling, that means the shift is very small and almost impercetible. So even if I released the change using the approach with #1, you probably wouldn't see any visible change. This is a tough decision to make because while #2 is the safer approach by far, it means there is no way for users with the problem to easily fix their annotations. At least users with the problem from #1 can just adjust all of their stamp annotations on a page at once using the nudge tool if necessary. Having said that, if there are users like yourself who always use the full screen scaling mode have many annotations over hundreds of songs, that would be unacceptable for them to have to edit all their songs to account for this issue.  Those users would never be able to switch page scaling modes or export their annotations without issues though, so it may just be postponing an inevitable problem and then making it so that they can't even fix the issue easily in the future...

Mike

I see your dilemma. Not an easy decision ...

Juan

[Frank Cox]

One other issue that you might want to take into consideration is that by adding exceptions to your code you're increasing its complexity and decreasing its long-term maintainability.

When you add conditional after conditional to account for version 1 of object x and version 2 of object y and version 16 of object z, after a while you end up with Microsoft Word where literally none of the programmers involved in its development has a good overall understanding of exactly how and why it does what it does.

I get a kick out of the docx "standard" where many of the so-called standards are literally stated as "do this like MS Word 6 does it".

Look at your code from the point of view of yourself six years down the road.  Are you going to be wondering why in the blue schmoo that block is there and trying to figure out a way to get rid of it without breaking something? 

[Zubersoft]

Yes, that is always a valid concern. I would certainly prefer not to have add different behavior between versions for this. I'm learning towards releasing the changes and dealing with any issues that arise from customers as I don't think there is a large percent of users that use both full page scaling and stamp annotations and their files are being stretched are a large enough amount for this to shift the annotations much.

Thanks,
Mike