Guide

Importing

Nothing is written until you have seen what the import will do. An identical file you already have is skipped without a question.

Add Songs

The import button at the top of the library opens Add Songs. Its bottom control has two groups.

• Add New: Create New Song opens the editor. From the Web takes the address of any web page that shows a song with chords. The page opens inside Stagehand. When the song is on screen, tap Add Song: Stagehand reads the title, artist, key, words and chords off the page and adds a ChordPro draft to a queue. Open the queue to look over or fix a draft, then choose Import All or Import Selected. You see the usual import plan, including songs you already have, and choose Replace, Keep both or Skip. The Add Song button is available only while a song is on the screen, and Queue only when something is queued. History (the clock) lists the pages you opened here so you can come back to them. Swipe a page to delete it, or use Clear to remove the last hour, today or everything. History stays on this iPad. Check each draft: pages lay chords out in many ways, and a chord can land a letter off. Scan a Page asks where the picture comes from: Take Pictures with the camera, Choose from Photos, or Choose from Files. It reads the chord sheet on the device, in English or Arabic, and opens it in the editor as a new song. It corrects chords the camera misread (a "Gn" becomes Gm), leaves out a second row of chords printed for a capo, reads two columns in order, and tells you above the text what it changed. Check it before you save: a scan can still miss small chords or misplace one. The camera is used only for this, and the pictures are not saved.
• Locations: Files, Dropbox, Google Drive and Other open the Files picker. Dropbox and Google Drive appear in its list when their apps are installed and turned on in Files. File Sharing imports the File Sharing folder in Stagehand's storage, which you fill from a computer or the Files app. Stagehand reads it and leaves it as it was.

Where files can come from

• Files, including On My iPad and iCloud Drive.
• Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and Box, when that app is installed and shows up in Files. You pick the files. Stagehand does not watch the cloud folder.
• AirDrop and the system share sheet’s Open In.
• A folder. The picker can take several files, and it walks a folder you select.
• The web console, from a computer on the same Wi-Fi.
• Create New Song, if you would rather type the chart. See Editing a chart.

Accepted chart types include .cho, .chopro, .chordpro, .pro, .crd, .onsong, .txt and PDF. A .shand or backup .zip is a restore, not a chart import. An mp3, wav, m4a, aiff, or caf is not a song: Stagehand refuses it here and tells you to add it from Backing pads or a song’s Media tab. See Backup and restore and Pads and tracks.

Files picker

1. Open Songs and the library you want the charts in.
2. Choose Add Songs, then Files under Locations.
3. Select files or a folder. Multiple selection is allowed.
4. Read the plan. New files are listed. Identical files are skipped. Conflicts wait for a choice.
5. Confirm. The charts are copied into this library. The originals you picked are left where they were.

AirDrop and Open In

When a chart arrives from outside the app, Stagehand copies it to a temporary place first, because the system permission to read the incoming file expires. You then get a one-file review, the same decisions as a batch, before it joins the library.

Conflicts

A conflict is the same file name with different contents. Matching ignores capitalisation, because the file system does. Songs you read from the web are also matched by title, so "Amazing Grace" is found even if your copy is stored under another file name.

When you save a song you wrote or scanned, Stagehand checks your library first. If the title is already there, a message offers Replace Existing, Keep Both (the new one gets a number, such as Amazing Grace 2) or Cancel. Nothing is replaced unless you choose it.

You can apply one choice to the rest of the batch. Identical bytes under the same name are not a conflict. Re-importing a file you already have does not ask.

Keep both

amazing-grace.cho becomes amazing-grace 2.cho, then 3, skipping numbers already used. Two incoming files with the same name in one batch are both kept: the second takes the next free number. If you switch one conflict from Keep both to Replace, the freed number can be reused by a later file in that same plan.