V6. 0.0 Beta10: Highlighter / Annotations

[Alistair Baty]

We use the Highlighter extensively for Annotations

• Notes for song or leader nuances
  
• Flow, rhythmic notation
  
• BeatBuddy cues (what bb drum part for different sections), etc
  

There are a few things that are not working as expected or not at all.

1. There are some things that seem to indicate a fundamental change in scaling or layout philosophy in V6, from the "one page" approach V5.  If so can you share what that is?
   
2. Most of my highlighter PNG files do not show up on the song. If you hold the Icon for EDIT then you DO see it, can update it and save, but it still does not show up.
   
3. Those of my other PNG highlighter files that do show, are scaled strangely. It appears that some are trying to scale into the column instead (or smaller top left).
   
4. I will try to figure out if I can get the scaling to match the old version so they "fit".
   
5. As we have a significant history of Annotations, having them work directly, or automatically migrate across to the new scaling/format would be incredibly helpful great; porting then across may need a bunch of work, from capturing screenshots BEFORE updating and then manually redoing them in V6.
   
6. In current V5 it is really helpful that you can keep the highlighter menu visible, for easy access to changing colors or UNDO etc. Can this be added? 
   

Thanks again to everyone for all you do.

[Alistair Baty]

I thought it may be a screen size or resolution thing, that was hiding the admissions. I don't see Annotations from my tablet on my phone in V5. But when I changed my phone scale from Width to FULL, I do see them. The scaling is out, as the Display settings and size are different on the two devices.

One option to accommodate different devices (for one user) could be to provide a custom adjustment setting for Annotations that are device specific. (Offset H and V,  and Scale H and V)

Actually, simply scale / stretch to the full "window" may achieve acceptable cross device compatibility. Stretching will be slight and and probably go unnoticed. Where there are large differences between shared devices the following per device settings, should help.

Annotation Scaling

1. Fit             (the whole annotation mantaining aspect ratio)
2. Stretch     (the whole annotation stretched)

• "Fit to height" align left, (This is the current approach in V5 which means it cuts off any extra width/annotations to the right.)
• "Fit to height" align right  (a comment here is that because the lyrics are aligned left, some people will only have annotations on the right side of the screen so this option could help them)

Annotation Window (margins)

1. Top
   
2. Bottom
   
3. Left
   
4. Right

• If the margins can be negative it would make the two bullets under scaling redundant.
  

Keeping the current approach of different annotations for PORTRAIT and LANDSCAPE is appropriate, but making them device specific would be a last resort in my mind - I would not look forward to having to transfer them across and rather live with slight stretching.

Thanks,

[Alistair Baty]

No annotations on song

Editing shows Annotations

 

[Gareth Evans]

Hi Alistair,

I found a bug that was stopping the highlighter notes showing correctly and will have a fix in place in beta 11.

The scaling should stretch the highlighter notes to the height and width of the song display automatically (stretching as you described).  The song autoscale logic is way better in v6 and scales properly rather than trying to adjust font sizes as in v5.6.  I am hopeful that most highlighter notes should match reasonably well, but if not, it will be the scaling logic between v5.6 and v6 that causes discrepancies, particularly songs that displayed as multiple columns (where v5 didn't do this very well).

The highlighter effectively takes a screenshot of the song display (full autoscale or width only autoscale) to place below the highlighter edit page and creates a png file that matches this window size.  It shrinks the song so it fits on the edit page for highlighting.  When the highlighter is displayed, the highlighter file is then stretched to match the scaling of the song (width and height).

Can you let me know how beta 11 displays the notes and how far out they are before I look into the idea of margins, etc.

Unfortunately due to different devices and resolutions, synchronising highlighter notes will never be perfect.

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[Alistair Baty]

Hi Gareth

On my tablet,  on some songs when the song fits one page (only 1 column and not 2 columns is needed), the background color (i.e. the verse or chorus background), does not fill the screen width. It appears that there is scaling involved.

Regarding the highlighter...

1. A couple of the songs are now showing perfectly - seems to be clearer than V5.
2. A couple, only two, seemed to scale to fit the first column of a 2 column song. So it is small.
3. Song others limited the width of the highlighter image to the width of the "single" column as described above. I tried to see if I could add highlighting in the margins, but the screenshot image is only the width of the column (long and narrow), and not the full tablet screen width.
   
4. Most seem to not detect the tablet orientation. I discovered it by opening a song I knew I had the highlighter image for. I backed up the image and then added highlighting to the song. The new highlighter image was saved with "_l.png" at the end, even though the tablet is in portrait. When I renamed the original file to have the "_l.png" instead of "_p.png" then it showed up on the setting sheet refresh.
   
   

Let me know if there are any files or tests you want me to help with.

Thanks

Alistair

[Gareth Evans]

Hi Alistair,

I've updated the highlighter filename logic and made a new change (will be available in beta 15 shortly).

There will now (from beta 15) be 3 options of highlighter filenames

• If a song displays in one column, it will always use the _p.png file.  This will work with any scaling method and any orientation
• If a song displays in multiple columns and is in portrait mode (not common!), it will use the _c.png file.  This only applies to portrait, full scale and showing columns
• It a song displays in multiple columns and is in landscape mode, it will use the _l.png file.  Only applies to landscape, full scale and showing columns

I've just pushed beta v14, but this change didn't make it.  v13/14 simply used _p.png if there was one column and _l.png if not - it actually ignored the orientation of the device, but as you've spotted, this breaks when using portrait display and multiple columns are shown.  This is why I've now added the _c.png format.

[garethev...@gmail.com]

I should also say that due to scaling, highlighter notes do not have margins - they will match the song layout.  You can manually add top/bottom margins to the song using the edit song (add extra lines) and make sure that the advanced song display options have the 'trim sections' option switched off.  I wouldn't recommend this though, but it is a workaround.  You can't have left/right margins.

The reason is to stretch the highlighter to exactly match the song display.  This is also why coloured backgrounds on the lyrics don't extend to the page width, but only the song width.