Hi All,
When accessing the bookmark list with in an open score the bookmarks are in page order. Who would support a request to have these in alphabetical order - similar to when accessing them via the main bookmarks tab. When trying to find a piece of music within a large album/score this would be so much easier. Let me know if you agree.
As far as I understand, bookmarks are for jumping to repeats or coda in the score. I don't see the added value to alphabetic ordering.
Of course, you can use them to jump from a table of contents to a song in an album. But then, the table of content is already sorted.
Or am I misunderstanding bookmarks?
As I understood (MS)bookmarks are taken from bookmarks already within PDFs, but you can add and make your own in MS (which are not saved in the PDF).
Main user case probably is to use (existing) bookmarks to split a big file into single songs in MS (instead with a csv).
If you use single songs then you don't really need bookmarks any more, especially if you assign them to a collection or an album. Also you don't need bookmarks for repeats and codas. That's more for link points (or editing the page order).
If you prefer to keep big PDFs which don't have alphabetical content without splitting there is a minor use case for alphabetical sorting. Personally I don't need it since I would change or add bookmarks for such rare use cases directly in the PDF with a good editor or split the PDF up in single songs into an album. I strongly suggest to do the latter if one needs an alphabetical list of the content of an unsplit (already bookmarked) PDF.
There seems to be some confusion around the intention of bookmarks. This is taken from the MS Manual: "Bookmarks are very useful when dealing with large scores or PDFs containing multiple songs in them, as you can individually mark the songs with bookmarks, and load these from the bookmarks tab."
If I open a large file which has a big collection of nearly 100 song titles, I bookmark each song so i can go directly to them. I don’t see how having the bookmarks appear in the same order as in the file itself is so useful.. I either have to scroll through each page to find the song- or scroll through the bookmark list. Consider this scenario. I am conducting a 30 member choir all using MS and I ask them to go to ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow” .. what is the quickest way for everyone to find the page if all bookmarks are in page order? Having them appear alphabetically would mean a quick glance down to the letter ‘S’ in the bookmark list.
When you go to the main bookmark list (outside of a score) They appear in alphabetical order because the same logic is applied.
FWIW, I would import the large, multi-song pdf by using a CSV file. Far more useful than manually created bookmarks IMHO, AND you have the benefit of each song appearing in the library screen... in alphabetical order...
For some of the bands I'm in, there are several books in use, and I have imported each one into its own Collection, as well as into a "catch-all" collection.
E.G. csv import of "multisong book 1" for Tuba has directives to place the imported songs into collection " multisong book 1 - Tuba", AND into collection "Tuba"
plus: csv import of "multisong book 2" for Tuba imports the songs into collection " multisong book 2 - Tuba", AND into collection "Tuba"
That way I can operate specifically from a selected book OR I can operate from the catch all collection. I almost, but not quite, exclusively use the catch-all.
N.B. as I am in several bands that do not share repertoire I would use slightly different naming conventions if I were not already using different libraries for each band.
@lawrie
Yes, that's what I was trying to say. Working with csv and splitting files and taking advantage of the database functions of MS is much better and allows for much better handling with setlists or leader/client connections.
@CarlOz
I don't know if you meant I'm confusing bookmarks here. I think not. I'm using MS for over 10 years and think I'm relatively knowledgable regarding its features and conventions.
But I agree there is often confusion for newcomers with bookmarks because PDF bookmarks are a bit different than bookmarks in MS (and then there ist forscore which uses/calls bookmarks in another completely different way).
As lawrie and I wrote, there are better ways to "get to the songs" than over bookmarks in a big file with many songs and your request only is of use if you insist on using your songs collected in one PDF (which BTW isn't changed if you "split" it with a csv; this actually is a process for making "bookmarks" like in forscore for all the songs in the PDF so it can be used in the database with all MS features).
rlCarl