07-07-2025, 08:09 AM
I'm a bit annoyed with Swiss1000 recurring statements MS would not provide proper means of organisation for band sheets.
It might be true that MS has been conceived as an organizing and displaying tool for one's personal PDF sheet collection and grown from that.
And T'm certain that still is and will be Mike's main target group which is vastly larger than the much smaller group of "centralized band orgainsators".
As we know MIke wants to and will address features for that like he does for all his customers. But IMHO it isn't the priority and necessity it is made here by Swiss1000.
All the more because MS already provides so many means and possibilities to get most of the things done one could want for sheets organization.
IMHO it's more that Swiss1000 expects Mike to develop and change MS to accomodate his very personal needs and workflow instead of trying to change his and find a solution with what MS already offers.
Sam, I don't think you need separate libraries (that's certainly one way to go), but I think what you want could be achieved better with collections (or other groups), snippets and layers.
(MIke, chime in, if I'm getting something wrong).
You would have quite some work to do initially but managing it after the first setup should be relatively easy.
You can have one master tablet where you set all up and then sync it to the other client tablets.
At first I would use PDFs which contain the complete sheets of the pieces (score, instruments etc.). Maybe you have such PDFs already, if not, they are easily created with PDF-Editors or Tools.
These complete PDFS must be imported onto your master tablet and should be put in a collection titled "complete PDFs" or any name you like. After that the tedious work begins. You have to create snippets from those "masters" for each instrument, selecting only the required pages from the complete PDF and rename the snippet accordingly. These new instrument snippets then should be organized in groups, for instance another collection but the other groups tabs are usable, too.
(Actually you don't have to use snippets and can use single PDFs as well, if they exist and you want to import them rather than make snippets where you have to define the pages ranges. Personally I prefer and use the snippet approach because I like having just one PDF file for all and save space on the tablet)
I don't want to go into specifics but only tell the principles.
Wenn you have done that you are already good to go to copy/sync the contents of your master tablet to the other ones.
And you can already do your first practise. Now to the pesonal notes. You have to teach your players not only how to do annotations for their notes. But if different players use the same PDF snippet and you will give them their own annotations you have to teach them the use of layers as well. It's not difficult, but you have to watch for having (and naming) different layers to put the annotations in and hiding and unhiding them as required.
This works as long they don't play and edit at the same time. If that can happen (or you don't want to work with layers) you can always make an additinal snippet for the same instrument and name them with the playeer name or a number.
I think as long each player only makes changes in his own instrument there shouldn't be much trouble even syncing all this to the master. But since I don't sync my databases with the MS sync feature I rather let Mike or others explain or dispute that.
It might be true that MS has been conceived as an organizing and displaying tool for one's personal PDF sheet collection and grown from that.
And T'm certain that still is and will be Mike's main target group which is vastly larger than the much smaller group of "centralized band orgainsators".
As we know MIke wants to and will address features for that like he does for all his customers. But IMHO it isn't the priority and necessity it is made here by Swiss1000.
All the more because MS already provides so many means and possibilities to get most of the things done one could want for sheets organization.
IMHO it's more that Swiss1000 expects Mike to develop and change MS to accomodate his very personal needs and workflow instead of trying to change his and find a solution with what MS already offers.
Sam, I don't think you need separate libraries (that's certainly one way to go), but I think what you want could be achieved better with collections (or other groups), snippets and layers.
(MIke, chime in, if I'm getting something wrong).
You would have quite some work to do initially but managing it after the first setup should be relatively easy.
You can have one master tablet where you set all up and then sync it to the other client tablets.
At first I would use PDFs which contain the complete sheets of the pieces (score, instruments etc.). Maybe you have such PDFs already, if not, they are easily created with PDF-Editors or Tools.
These complete PDFS must be imported onto your master tablet and should be put in a collection titled "complete PDFs" or any name you like. After that the tedious work begins. You have to create snippets from those "masters" for each instrument, selecting only the required pages from the complete PDF and rename the snippet accordingly. These new instrument snippets then should be organized in groups, for instance another collection but the other groups tabs are usable, too.
(Actually you don't have to use snippets and can use single PDFs as well, if they exist and you want to import them rather than make snippets where you have to define the pages ranges. Personally I prefer and use the snippet approach because I like having just one PDF file for all and save space on the tablet)
I don't want to go into specifics but only tell the principles.
Wenn you have done that you are already good to go to copy/sync the contents of your master tablet to the other ones.
And you can already do your first practise. Now to the pesonal notes. You have to teach your players not only how to do annotations for their notes. But if different players use the same PDF snippet and you will give them their own annotations you have to teach them the use of layers as well. It's not difficult, but you have to watch for having (and naming) different layers to put the annotations in and hiding and unhiding them as required.
This works as long they don't play and edit at the same time. If that can happen (or you don't want to work with layers) you can always make an additinal snippet for the same instrument and name them with the playeer name or a number.
I think as long each player only makes changes in his own instrument there shouldn't be much trouble even syncing all this to the master. But since I don't sync my databases with the MS sync feature I rather let Mike or others explain or dispute that.