1.0 Introduction
Global notes can be made whenever a recording is being played, just by tapping 'n' (or 'N': the case doesn't matter). The nano text editor opens and you can just start typing any observations or criticism of the recording that comes to mind. For example:
Each note you create in this matter over-writes any earlier note you may have made on the same client device ...but, crucially, it's stored in the Pro database, in a table called global_notes, as it is saved. The one local file (note.txt, stored in $HOME/.local/share/giocoso3/tmp) therefore keeps getting over-written by each new note; but each note is also stored permanently in the Pro database, uniquely and permanently 'attached' to the rechashvalue that determines the uniqueness of a recording:
That's me viewing the global_notes table in the DBeaver MySQL database browser tool. If you squint hard enough, you'll see the 'O mio babino caro starts at 2:11:00ish' comment that you saw me writing in the nano editor in the earlier screenshot: proof that local file content is transferred to the global, shared database!
A view in the Pro database called "notes" makes accessing the underlying global_notes table slightly easier: though the names of the various composers associated with these notes is definitely visible in the above screenshot, it's not terribly easy to sort by their names, because they're 'embedded' within the 'notes' column. The view fixes this:
It's very much the same information as before, but rather than an impenetrable 'rechashvalue' to identify a recording, the view has split out the composer and composition into nicely-accessible (and separate!) columns. It is this view which the Pro menu, Option 8 uses to produce its output.
Making notes is thus simply done whenever a recording is playing. Viewing the notes after they've been made is only possible using this 'View a global note' option of the Pro menu and it's done by selecting a composer first, then a specific recording second. When you first take the option to view a global note, therefore, you'll see this:
This is a tabulated version of the 'Composer' column in that Notes view I showed you earlier: each composer for whom a global note has ever been created is listed precisely once. Your job is to up- and down-arrow until your choice of composer is selected, then press the [SpaceBar] to put an asterisk in the brackets next to the name. If you selected the wrong composer by accident, arrow up and down again until you land on the right one: another hit of the [SpaceBar] will move the asterisk to the newly-selected composer. You'll note you can only pick one composer at a time!
Once the right composer is selected, press [Enter] whilst the [OK] button is highlighted: if you merely want to back out without doing anything, tab round until the [Cancel] button is highlighted and then press [Enter]. Assuming you've selected [OK] though, pressing [Enter] makes this happen:
This screen lists all the recordings attributed to the previously-selected composer for which global notes exist. In this specific example, Puccini only has one recording with notes, so only one item is listed. But if I'd notated a dozen of his opera recordings, all dozen of them would be listed here. Again, your job is to hit the up and down cursor keys until the right recording is highlighted. When it is, hit the [SpaceBar] to put an asterisk next to it... then click [OK] or press [Enter] whilst the [OK] option is highlighted. Once again, you can tab to the [Cancel] button and press [Enter] to back out without displaying anything at all, if you prefer.
Once you've selected a specific recording and pressed [Enter] on the [OK] option, however, this happens:
Now the note you created in nano is displayed to you. It's read-only, so strictly no editing! It's also word-wrapped (at 90 characters per line), so that may result in slightly awkward line breaks: you can see some of them in this screenshot, for example... though it's not entirely clear to me why there's a line break after the words "I treasure", as there's plenty of space on that line for what follows! The point is that the display of the text is an approximation at best and certainly not perfect!
You can scroll up and down (using up and down arrows or page up and down keys) to your heart's content. Any other keypress, however, triggers the 'Exit' option (which also has its own dedicated button, so pressing [Enter] will trigger it, too), returning you to the Pro menu once more.
It is definitely not pretty, therefore! But, thanks to the Pro shared database, it is a mechanism that allows you to make notes about recordings on any device and to then read them on any device thereafter. The notes certainly don't have to be long essays, such as Ian Lace's review of Pappano's recording of Il Trittico (on Classical CD Reviews), which I pasted in for the purposes of this documentation: pointing out where the big arias start and stop is usually the limit of my note-taking... but I know plenty of listeners who are much more engaged in this sort of thing than I am, so I hope this basic functionality meets their needs to some extent, at least.
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