forScore 10.3.5

Today we’re happy to announce the immediate availability of forScore 10.3.5 and forScore mini 3.3.5. These are some big updates, so we wanted to take a moment to dive in and explain some of the most significant changes we’ve made and why.

PDFKit

Introduced over a decade ago with OS X 10.4, PDFKit is a framework created by Apple to simplify working with PDF documents. It uses the same basic functions and techniques that we’ve been using in forScore since 2010, but with added functionality and compatibility (Apple’s many skilled engineers are far more effective at supporting all of the different variations of the thousand-page PDF specification than we are).

This year Apple brought their framework to iOS 11, and we’ve been working steadily since then to take full advantage of it. forScore 10.3 brought text-based PDF document searching and also updated the Bookmarks menu’s Table of Contents list, making it faster and more reliable. With versions 10.3.2 we passed the job of displaying embedded PDF annotations off to Apple, working around a nasty bug that made the older process of reading annotations painfully slow on iOS 11. Using PDFKit instead means that more kinds of PDF annotations are supported and that they’ll generally look more like they do on other Apple platforms, such as in Preview on macOS.

With today’s update, we’re bringing the power of PDFKit to our Rearrange and Merge functions. This means that pages will be formatted more consistently, any embedded PDF annotations will be preserved, and compatibility with all kinds of PDF files will be greatly improved. And if that’s not enough, it’s also significantly faster. We’re very excited by this change, since it finally enables us to correct some of the file-specific issues we’ve been powerless to fix for years.

There’s one final task that we hadn’t yet migrated over to PDFKit, and it’s a big one: page rendering. From displaying a page on the screen to creating the thumbnail images used throughout the app, the way forScore displays pages is a big deal. We wanted to make sure that we could take advantage of iOS’ latest capabilities, but we also recognize how much of an impact any change in this area could have on our many customers. So for this update, we’ve added the ability to use PDFKit page rendering and it’s off by default. In most cases, the difference between PDFKit rendering and the older methods is subtle—some files look significantly better (especially those created with Finale), but thumbnails can look bolder and darker than before. For now, we’re leaving that choice up to our users so they can pick the rendering method that provides the best balance of compatibility and aesthetics.

Smart Punctuation

iOS 11 introduced automatic replacement of standard apostrophe, quote, and dash characters with less-common but subtly improved variants. The ‘ and ” characters, for instance, are replaced by their curly equivalents of ’ and ”. This sounds like a minor change and it’s not even visible with most fonts, but it actually has a big impact on many apps’ search functionality since the words “app’s” and “app’s” are no longer equivalent. We’ll spare you the technical details, but suffice it to say that we’ve worked around these quibbles and with forScore 10.3.5 and forScore mini 3.3.5 you can now search for results containing either character interchangeably.

Beyond that, though, we’ve also improved how forScore handles all apostrophes while searching. Instead of only showing exact matches, forScore now uses the following rules:

• Queries that include apostrophes only produce results that also include those apostrophes (“it’s” produces “it’s” but not “its”)
• Queries that do not include apostrophes will produce results either with or without apostrophes (“its” produces both “its” and “it’s”)
• Queries that do not include apostrophes but are provided within quotes only produce exact matches (“its” produces “its” but not “it’s”)

Thrilling stuff, we know, but it’s the difference between something that works the way you expect and something that’s frustrating and pedantic.

Swipe Actions

One final iOS 11 change that we’d still been grappling with is the idea of full-swipe actions. These gestures allow you to perform a task like the common swipe-to-delete action, but without the two step process. Instead of swiping to show the delete action, then tapping to confirm, iOS 11 lets you simply swipe all the way from the right edge of a cell to the left edge and let go, deleting the item in one quick motion. That’s great for something like Mail where you can go into your Trash mailbox and retrieve something you’ve accidentally deleted, but in forScore there’s no such failsafe. So with this update we’ve disabled these gestures in situations where the consequences are irreversible.

Enhancements

These are just a few of the biggest highlights, but there’s a lot more within these updates. We’ve improved the speed of entering and exiting annotation mode, upgraded to the latest version of the AirTurn SDK, and fixed a bunch of tiny bugs that got sidelined in the run-up to iOS 11’s release. All of these changes add up to make forScore more capable and reliable, and—in the case of PDFKit—they really help us lay the foundation for whatever big changes Apple throws our way next.

These updates are absolutely free for all existing users, as always, and the same low price for newcomers who may have held on to paper a little too long. Special thanks to our wonderful beta testers who helped us get these versions ready for today’s release. We couldn’t do it without them, and without the incredible support of our users. Thank you!

forScore 10.3.5

Available now for iPad

forScore mini 3.3.5

Available now for iPhone and iPod Touch

10.3: Importing

Sharing files between apps is one of the most essential and fundamental parts of working on an iPad. A device focused so heavily on single-purpose tasks needs to play well with others, so almost from the start iOS has offered the “open in…” feature that lets you share your content in a variety of ways. You might, for example, open a PDF in Safari and then choose to send a copy of it to forScore.

These days Drag and Drop is all the rage, and it works very similarly under the hood (even if the way you use it seems entirely different). Drag one or more compatible files from an app right into forScore and drop them onto the page or into a setlist to add a copy to your library. Unlike the old “open in…” method, Drag and Drop lets you import multiple files at once, which leads us to this week’s feature: conflict management.

Sure, it’s not a big front-of-the-box feature, but conflict management is an important part of any file-based app. When you import a file and another file already exists in your forScore library with that name, you’re now prompted to overwrite, duplicate, or skip files with conflicting names. This works just like it always has with the Services panel, but now it’s built right into forScore’s main view and many of its menus. Whether it’s just one file or a set of three with two conflicts, you’ll only be prompted once so you can pick what you need and let forScore do the rest.

10.3: Unlinking Recordings

forScore’s audio file picker—available from within the Metadata panel’s Audio tab—lets you view and manage audio tracks you’ve imported into your library and allows you to link them to any of your scores or bookmarks, giving you automatic queueing and easier playback control. When you create a recording, however, things work a little differently.

Recordings are automatically linked to the current score or bookmark the moment they’re created. They’re only available to that same piece, and they’re deleted once you remove them from that piece. If you open the audio file picker while viewing that same score or bookmark you’ll see it listed at the top under “recordings,” but as soon as you navigate to any other piece it’ll disappear.

If you prefer to work with recordings just as you would with imported audio files, just swipe from right to left over the recording in the audio file picker and choose “unlink.” You’ll still be able to access the recording and control playback from the piece you created it with, but you’ll also be able to add it to other scores or bookmarks in your library and, if you remove it from any one piece, the file will remain in your library instead of being deleted.

More Video Sightings

Seal’s new album of jazz standards is out today, and PBS has just released a video of his performance of “Luck Be A Lady” at Vibrato Jazz Grill in Los Angeles. His big band includes the inimitable Alan Steinberger, complete with his iPad and forScore. The video includes a few snippets of him using our app, and it’s always a pleasure to see it in use (you can even catch a page turn just after the 5-minute mark—effortless compared to an earlier moment where one of his paper-based colleagues struggles).

10.3: Quick Peek

When we started this series over two-and-a-half years ago (has it really been that long?), we picked one of our favorite features, Quick Peek. Built into most of forScore’s menus, it’s an easy way to preview a score before opening it by tapping and holding the item until the preview appears. Tap the thumbnail image to open the score or bookmark, or tap the + button in the bottom right-hand corner to open it in a new tab.

A few things were changed in iOS 11, though, and that tap and hold gesture is now used by iOS for Drag and Drop, so we had to come up with a new way of invoking this helpful feature. Now, instead of tapping and holding the item with one finger, do the same thing with two fingers instead.

Since that’s not the most obvious gesture (these days all the good ones are taken), we added a second way to preview your items. Just as you’ve always been able to swipe from right to left over a table cell to show the “delete” action, forScore 10.3 features a similar “peek” action on the other side that you’ll see when swiping from left to right. You can use a short swipe to show this item and then tap it to see the preview, or you can just swipe all the way across the cell to invoke Quick Peek with one quick motion.

Times change, conventions evolve, but have no fear—Quick Peek hasn’t gone anywhere. We use it all the time and, judging by how many people wrote to us to ask us about this change, so do you!