Copying free tab on site help?

[pbrawdy]

I want to copy the entire mountain dulcimer tab to my computer so I can download on My Ipad2. Is there a way to highlight the entire file and move to a folder on computer...It looks like excell format. When I try to copay nothing happens... To copy each PDF individually is a pain, and it would take renaming each to get them in file... Otherwise since they are all called PDF the computer thinks they are the same and won't copy on top of each other... You computer geeks out there, help me out!

[KenH]

You're talking about copying all the tab from here at ED? Why would you want the entire collection??? Unfortunately things won't work the way you want. You'll have to individually open the songs you want, and then click the Save As button in the toolbar that appears.

[Rahere]

It's just an HTML table, save the page as an HTML file and open it as such into Excel. Delete the header and footer guff before heading into VBA.
Then write yourself a macro to run through the PDF links and save them to disk. Just a tip where to find the links in Excel, put Application in the Watch window and run it down from there, should be a list of Items headed by a Count variable at the level above.
Myriad.fr do a PDF music OCR, in passing
Repeat 26 times...

[pbrawdy]

You're talking about copying all the tab from here at ED? Why would you want the entire collection??? Unfortunately things won't work the way you want. You'll have to individually open the songs you want, and then click the Save As button in the toolbar that appears.

When I go to a jam I never seem to have the tune with me or i can't figure out what book I have it in. I have a ton of hammered dulcimer music in my iPad and take it to jams instead of hauling a hundred pounds of books. Now I am going to do the same for mtn dulcimer jams.

[pbrawdy]

It's just an HTML table, save the page as an HTML file and open it as such into Excel. Delete the header and footer guff before heading into VBA.
Then write yourself a macro to run through the PDF links and save them to disk. Just a tip where to find the links in Excel, put Application in the Watch window and run it down from there, should be a list of Items headed by a Count variable at the level above.
Myriad.fr do a PDF music OCR, in passing
Repeat 26 times...

Okay I don't understand all this. Sorry but you are talking to a non techie
I can't save it. It highlights the stuff inside the boxes but not the page, or total box...

[rendesvous1840]

That sounds like an Abbot & Costello routine to me. Who's on first, What's on second....
Paul

[pbrawdy]

Can anyone get the entire tab file into a folder and put it in dropbox and share?

[Rahere]

Most browsers can save a web page in HTML format, so that's the first stage, localise the data.
Excel can then read that file, but it forces it into its own best guess of what the original page looked like. Usually, that lets you extract things like tables and the like, but page headers and suchlike mess it up. As you don't need these, you can delete them like any other Excel data, and ignore any graphics floating around.
Then it's just a techie job to use the VB macro tools to save off the pdf files linked to from there. It's far less mindkilling than doing each by hand.
Alternatively download each the same way from here directly. Or just trust our hosts to keep things available...

Another angle is to take a local copy of the section, see http://tips.webdesign10.com/how-to-save ... ne-viewing for Firefox. IE has a similar option on its bookmarks, allowing you to keep a certain depth of data beneath: in this instance, 2 links further should give you the lot.

[dtmd]

An old proverb says if you want to eat the whole thing you must take one bite at a time. If you tried to load the entire tab folder all at once your computer/ipad would think it was one record and you would not be able to save the indidvidual tab. If your ipad is Internet capable then you could log into ED and select which tabs to download. Yes it is one at a time but if you start with the songs you play most then continue with the ones you like and then add the rest you will have taken one bite at a time and will have accomplished the task. This is what I did and it really did not take me as long as you might think. I have a droid tablet - not an ipad and I now have over 300 tabs loaded on my tablet.

[strumelia]

Why don't you start by downloading the tabs of tunes you actually like and want to learn to play?

[Dusty Turtle]

First, I do not think you could download the entire tab archive into a useable format. Although most of it is in pdf format, not all is, and you would have to manually go in and convert each individual file.

Second, I don't see why you would want to download the entire tab archive. Some is written in melody/drone style; some is written in chord/melody style. Some arrangements are great; some uh ... er ... less so.

Third, you have an iPad. Steve Jobs deliberately did not give you a USB or any other kind of port on that device. Apple does not want you to store a lot of data on the iPad but instead believes we should all be downloading from "the cloud" anytime we want content. Perhaps you can tell from my tone what I think of this arrogant and heavy-handed plan (I think it is arrogant and heavy handed), but as long as you have internet access, you will always be able to find the tab you want anyway.

Fourth, follow the advice of others and just start with the tab you know you want. Download it. Put it in a folder organized by song title. It will be easy to search and easy to add to. And most jams have a relatively stable repertoire, so you can just learn what that is and make sure you have the tab you need before going to the jam.

Fifth, oh I forgot. But good luck no matter what you decide to do.

[Acmespaceship]

Everyone I know with a tablet or e-reader has experienced the same three revelations:

1) Paper is so yesterday. You can't wait to ditch the binder of paper tab and you're looking forward to having everything with you, not just the handful of tunes you printed out (which never turn out to be the tunes you need). But...

2) Moving content, now on paper or online, onto the tablet takes more time than you expected.

3) You spend a lot of time in places where wi-fi is not available -- and most tablets sold today are wi-fi only. If you do shell out $$ for a cellular data plan, you learn about data caps. Either way, "the Cloud" is nowhere near as dependable as those tv commercials said it would be.

Webmasters are slowly realizing there's a market for tablet-ready content. This is a revenue opportunity. There are sites where files that are individually downloadable for free are packaged into a single zip file, and people are willing to pay 15, 20, 25 bucks for the convenience.

In the meantime, not being an html programmer and not having access to this site's databases, I can't see any way to get the ED tab collection onto a tablet except to download each individual file. There are Android apps that can save PDF files to the tablet, not sure about iPad. It would be faster to download tab files on a desktop PC and save them to the PC hard drive, then use Dropbox to transfer them to the tablet. Which is a pain, but there you go. Scanning paper is no picnic, either.

I sympathize because I visit a uke club where they play from a heavy book. I hate lugging the blasted thing around, but I don't want to scan it either. Scanning only a few songs is not an option because I'm playing with the club and I have no idea which song they'll choose next.