2013-12-24
Hymnals Reader / Gather Third Edition - usability is poor
While the material is all there, usability is poor. This software has the feel of a 1.0 version. Hopefully it will improve in the future.
You can only view a single page at a time, and scrolling is erratic - a swipe can scroll the entire page, or just a staff, or not at all, and it’s impossible to predict which will occur at any particular time.
Page formatting is irregular as well - sometimes an entire page will fit on the screen, sometimes not, depending on the number of verses of text, alternate languages, etc. There is no way to re-size a page to fit comfortably on the screen.
Being able to print out a hymn would solve a lot of these usability problems, but unfortunately copyright ownership has priority over usability here.
Needless to say all this makes it more or less useless for actual performance use.
Add to this the amateurish music typography (carried over without improvement from the print edition of Gather) , the high price of content (identical to the full hardcover print versions) and it is hard to recommend this software.