If you’ve used setlists before, you probably know all about how to add, remove, and rearrange the items within them. There’s another way of changing things, though, and it’s in the Metadata panel.
Tap the circled arrow next to any item in a menu or tap the title of the current piece in the main view to see the metadata panel. In the lower section, the “Setlists” tab shows all of your setlists and a check mark next to the ones that your item is a part of. Tap a checked setlist to remove the item from it, or tap an unchecked setlist to add it. You’ll probably want to still go into the Setlists menu and rearrange items once you’ve added them, but this view gives you a way to see a quick overview or to add a new piece to a few different setlists easily.
February 26, 2016
| Feature of the Week
Last week we discussed Snapshots, a way of saving the annotations on a page and restoring them later. That works well for certain situations, but only annotations are saved and on a page-by-page basis. For changes that affect an entire piece, Versions is the tool for the job.
Versions lets you save and restore all of a score’s metadata and annotations at once. A teacher, for instance, might want to use the same PDF file for several different students but with personalized annotations and recordings. Select “Versions” from the Tools menu to get started—the interface looks similar to the Snapshots feature, so if you followed along last week creating and browsing through a score’s versions should feel familiar.
Unlike Snapshots, which simply copy your annotations back and forth as they’re saved and restored, Versions introduces the idea of a “current” version. When you create or restore a version, an arrow will appear next to it. It won’t be updated automatically as you make changes to your score, but the next time you switch to a different version or create a new one, you’ll be prompted to save those changes to the current version first. You can also select the current version and manually save it at any time.
So next time you find yourself duplicating files and renaming them to tell them apart, save some space and remember to use the Versions tool instead!
February 19, 2016
| Feature of the Week
Context is important, and the annotations you make today may not be useful in another situation. Instead of constantly erasing everything and starting from scratch, forScore’s Snapshots tool lets you save and restore all of the annotations on a page, including your drawings, stamps, shapes, links, buttons, and text annotations.
While in annotation mode, tap the clock icon (the last tool in the lower row of controls) to see the Snapshots interface. Tap the “Add Snapshot” button and give it a name, and all of the annotations you’ve made—even if you haven’t saved them yet—will be copied and displayed in a row along the top of the screen. Tap on it to see a preview, rename it, delete or restore it.
Now you can continue annotating, or erase everything and start over, saving as many new sets of annotations as you like. To reset the page back to a saved state, simply tap on the snapshot you want to use and tap the “Restore Snapshot” button to replace all of the annotations on the page with that snapshot.
So whether you’re maintaining separate annotations for practice vs. performance or you’re a teacher with multiple students, snapshots can save you time and let you work more flexibly.
February 12, 2016
| Feature of the Week
Back when the iPad was first introduced, there were a few key things from a software standpoint that really made it feel like a completely new thing: the photos app with its unique interface and gestures, the mail app’s split screen layout, and of course iBooks with its unbelievable page curl animation.
Every version of forScore has used this same animation when moving between pages, and although it’s not the head-turning detail that it once was it still fits well with the page turning concept. Unfortunately, it’s a system-provided animation and can’t be customized, so it always curls up from the bottom right-hand corner of the screen up to the top left. That means the most important part of the next page is the last part of the page to come into view. We’ve sped up the animations a lot since version 1.0 to help, but if they just don’t work for you we’ve since added three other options: stack, slide, and no animation at all. (Tap the “Page Transitions” option in the settings panel to try them out for yourself.)
The “Stack” option animates the top page only, throwing it off to the left and revealing the static next page beneath it. The “Slide” option moves the current page off to the left while moving the next page in from the right, like camera film advancing. Both animations work in reverse when you navigate to the previous page.
The “Off” option removes animations altogether, making your page turns virtually instantaneous. For some, the lack of animation makes it difficult to see if you’ve actually advanced to the next page or not, but for others it’s perfect. Try them all out and find the one that works for you!
February 5, 2016
| Feature of the Week
Sometimes one song is enough, but when you’re playing through several different pieces you’ll want to know about Up Next. By default, when you select a song from a Setlist, you’ll be able to turn pages not just within that song, but also between all of the songs in that setlist—so turning past the last page of one song takes you to the first page of the next.
When you get to the last page of a score and you’re not already at the end of your list, Up Next lets you see what’s coming up before you actually turn the page. It’s a small notification that slides down over your device’s status bar (where you can see things like the current time or battery level) and shows the name of the next piece in the queue. There’s also a small gear icon on the right-hand side that lets you customize how long this notification appears: for four seconds, ten seconds, indefinitely, or never.