September 28, 2018
| Feature of the Week
With forScore 10.0 we introduced the ability to rotate pages slightly while cropping to correct for crooked scans. The de-skew slider in the cropping toolbar lets you adjust a page by up to 20° clockwise or counter-clockwise.
As of forScore 10.4.7, dragging this slider now shows a helpful grid overlay so you can better judge when your page is straight. Let go of the slider and the grid fades away to you can continue to make adjustments and save them when you’re finished. It’s just one more added touch that helps you get to playing your music as quickly as possible.
September 21, 2018
| Feature of the Week
If you connect your device to iTunes or open the Files app you’ll be able to see the documents you’ve added to forScore, but that’s only half of the story. Other information, like your setlists, annotations, metadata, settings, and more, are stored in other locations that you can’t access directly. Instead, you use the app to make edits and forScore manages that data internally.
Early on in forScore’s development we added the Backup panel which allows users to create a snapshot of this internal data so you can revert to a previous state if needed. Backups use the custom 4SB file format and they’re saved to the same folder where all of your PDFs and other documents are stored so you can access them and copy them to a safe location.
This works well as an added layer of protection: if you accidentally delete a folder full of setlists, for instance, restoring from the latest automatic backup is usually enough to get you back up and running. It also helps you back up your entire library to your computer by ensuring that forScore’s information about your PDF files isn’t lost: create a 4SB backup in forScore, open iTunes on your computer and access the File Sharing panel, then copy everything there to a safe location.
More and more people rely on cloud storage providers, though, and backing up using a service like Dropbox by uploading every one of your documents is tenuous. If one file doesn’t make it, you might never know and end up with an incomplete backup. Copying data through iTunes and a USB cable is simply more reliable than uploading it to a server.
That’s why we introduced 4SB Archives with our latest updates. Archives are single files that contain your entire forScore library, documents and all. You can upload one to Dropbox and, if the upload is successful, you know the backup is complete. Archives require more storage space than backups, since they include all of your documents, but they’re a helpful new tool in the right situation.
September 17, 2018
| News
Today is release day for iOS 12, and we’ve been working hard all summer long to get our apps ready. On Friday we rolled out a bunch of minor updates for most of our apps, adding support for all of the latest iPhones, and today we’re finishing up with some nice upgrades to forScore and forScore mini. If you’re thinking about updating, here’s the latest word regarding forScore’s iOS 12 compatibility:
We aren’t currently aware of any issues when running recent versions of any of our apps on devices with the final iOS beta installed. The version Apple releases to the public today may be different than what we’ve had access to in testing, however, so things can always change at the last minute. As usual, our advice is to hold off on installing major updates like these for a few weeks if you rely on forScore professionally. Otherwise, make sure you manually back up your forScore library and feel free to upgrade when you’re ready.
September 17, 2018
| News
Today we’re happy to announce the release of forScore 10.4.7 and forScore mini 3.4.7. These are technically minor updates that focus on optimizing our apps for iOS 12, but they’ve got a few exciting features and a lot of under-the-hood upgrades. Here are just a few quick highlights:
First, we’ve added the ability to create 4SB Archives using forScore’s backup panel. Like backups, archives include forScore’s information about your files, but they also include a copy of every file you’ve stored in forScore’s Documents directory. That means Archives take up significantly more space, but they can be used on their own to migrate or recover your forScore library. While 4SB backups are still recommended when copying your files back to a computer through iTunes’ File Sharing panel, 4SB Archives are a better choice when backing up to a cloud storage provider.
Next, forScore now defaults to using Apple’s PDFKit framework to render pages. When PDFKit debuted on iOS devices last year we wanted to make sure it provided the best possible results for the wide range of PDF files out there, so we let users opt in when they were ready. Now that we have a year’s worth of positive feedback it’s time to enable it for everyone.
You can now Drag and Drop a PDF file from another app directly into the Rearrange panel to insert its pages without importing the file into your forScore library first. Its pages are added to the end of the document you’re working with, and you can move them around and duplicate, rotate, or remove them as needed from there.
Speaking of Drag and Drop, some people have found that the new gestures get in the way more than they help so we added a new “Drag and Drop” option in the Accessibility section of forScore’s settings panel. This disables most of forScore’s Drag and Drop interactions while preserving the ability to import files from other apps by dropping them into forScore.
These improvements and more are available now with forScore 10.4.7 and forScore mini 3.4.7, free updates for all existing users and still the same great price for newcomers. Thanks once again to our amazing beta testers for all of your help, we sincerely appreciate it!
Available now for iPad
Available now for iPhone and iPod Touch
September 14, 2018
| Feature of the Week
When you’re first getting started with forScore, it’s great to be able to jump right in and see how it all works before you begin the process of digitizing your paper scores or invest in a large collection of digital sheet music. In fact, when forScore launched it was preloaded with almost 300 pieces of public domain music from the Mutopia Project. As time went on and people became more familiar with the concept of reading sheet music off of an iPad, including that content no longer made sense. It made updates larger and took up more storage space, so we removed it—but it wasn’t gone for good.
With forScore 2 we removed these scores from forScore itself and made them downloadable directly from our website instead, and with forScore 4 we expanded that concept into the forStore: our storefront that offers a variety of PDF scores for download using Apple’s in-app purchase system. Our forStore (choose “Store” from forScore’s Tools menu to access it) offers pieces from a handful of publishers, including those Mutopia scores we originally optimized for use with forScore. A few of the most popular composer collections are available for just 99 cents each and the rest are completely free, so it’s a great place to find something to get you started.
Earlier this year we also partnered with Musicnotes so you can download your purchases directly into forScore as standard PDF files. They have a small selection of free scores on their website that is definitely worth checking out if you haven’t done so already.
