Context: I play folk guitar, and up to about 2010 I had a pretty good repertoire – something like 200 songs I could play from memory at the drop of a hat – and I’ve just returned to playing more seriously again. The problem with a large repertoire is remembering what you can remember, plus the eternal question of getting the right key for your voice; and for times when memory fails slightly, prompts for the start of each verse.
Back in the 2000s, I had an Access 97 database on my home PC. The Access front-end was happy to let me create a view with two lines per song so I could print my song list efficiently onto A4 paper without needing a chunky folder, and all was good. At least until Access became basically obsolete, and the years rolled on, and like everyone I now want this accessible from a phone or tablet instead of on scuffed pieces of paper. It seems pretty clear though that a database is still the right way to go about it; but similarly to before, I’d still like all the songs to be shown as a table/list, with a couple of lines of info for each song, and some kind of filtering option to sort/find things easily.
I don’t have the time to do a ton of coding, so ideally I’d like this to have a web interface, although I’m happy to compromise if there’s a decent framework which works across a bunch of devices. I’m a software engineer as a day job, so if it’s necessary to write code then I have no problems going there, but it feels like unnecessary effort. Access 97 could do this somewhat straightforwardly without needing code, and I think it’s not an unreasonable expectation that things should be at least as useable as 30-year-old software!
For connectivity, cloud storage is fine, but I do need there to be a cached version on the device. I’m regularly out in a field somewhere, playing around a campfire, and there often isn’t much network coverage. I’m happy for this to need refreshing before I head off into the great outdoors, but “no network, no work” isn’t OK.
I’ve looked at a few options online (at least the free versions). Everything though seems to be either a table view that’s “look like a spreadsheet and no-one ever needs more than one line per entry”, which doesn’t give me enough space unless I do a lot of sideways scrolling; or “one page only shows one entry” and then you can’t quickly flick through the list. Neither is what I want. I’m fine with those for data entry, but there does need to be a “viewing” mode for displaying this in the format I’d like. Filtering/sorting options also seem to be more limiting than I would have expected, considering this is the most basic feature of working with data.
If this is an issue with the setup I’m using, can anyone recommend a good (ideally free) site/framework? I did have hopes for Memento, but its limits seem, well, limited. I wouldn’t expect this to become outdated fast enough to not be helpful to other people.
Alternatively, this may be a case of me not doing my data display the right way, or searching with the right terminology. (I said I’m a software engineer, but that’s embedded software.) Is there a standard way to describe this kind of layout which I’m just not searching for?
