Windows and Mac OS
DSC collections are downloaded as a single zip archive. Move the archive from downloads to the location on your drive where you want it to reside. The built in utilities on Windows and Mac OS will unzip the collection correctly when you double click the archive.
All DSC collections have been assembled using Adobe Acrobat and work well with Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader program. The scores are available through the table of contents page. Each collection has a unique name for the table of contents, but all collections have a pdf file that begins “How to use.” That document will have instructions for your particular collection. Generally, in single key editions, simply click on a song title to open the score for that song. The score will appear in another tab or window, depending on your settings in Adobe Reader. You can set your preferred magnification for a newly opened song in the Preferences dialog of Reader. The blue “sticky note” in the upper right corner of the first page of the song is a link to a midi file. Double clicking the sticky note should initiate playback of the song as long as your computer has a default program associated with *.Mid files. In Windows, this will normally be Windows Media Player, but any midi player should work. On Mac OS, there is no default midi player, and you may have to install one from the Apple store. NS Midi Player works pretty well and is free, although its default acoustic grand sound is a cross between a harpsichord and a forte piano. (The majority of the midi files use the acoustic grand piano as the default instrument.) You do have the option to load other soundfonts, and an internet search will reveal several free sound fonts that have better piano sounds.
The TOC will have links to other indices and to notes on the particular collection in its bookmark section. If you are using one of the larger, multiple-key collections, a key list or index will be your access to transpositions of a song. From that index, simply click on the key you want. The key list (index) can be used instead of the TOC in the instructions below as per your preference.
To access the table of contents easily in Windows, use Windows Explorer to navigate to the table of contents and create a short-cut by right clicking on the file and selecting “Create shortcut” from the context menu. You can rename the short cut anything that makes sense to you, and it will still link to the TOC. Pin Adobe Reader to your taskbar and pin the shortcut to its jump-list. Alternatively, place the shortcut on your desktop or in your start menu.
On Mac OS you would use Finder to locate the table of contents. Right click (or Control-click) and select Make Alias from the context menu. You can rename the alias as you wish and drag it to your desktop or app dock for easy access.
Ipad OS (IOS)
Because it was designed as a consumer device, Ipad OS has a lot of restrictions on how files are accessed. Adobe Reader for the IPad will not follow the links to the scores in the table of contents; however, at least two, free, pdf-reader apps for the Ipad will: Pdf Expert and Foxit. Pdf Expert will follow all the links in the Table of Contents including the links to other indices in the bookmark section of the TOC. Foxit will not open those bookmarks but it will open the links to the actual scores. (All of the other indices are in the root folder of the collection and can be opened easily with Foxit’s file browser.) Foxit allows you to open the midi files more consistently. Pdf Expert uses the upper upper-right-hand corner to initiate bookmarks or comments, so you must magnify the file to easily click on the paper clip icon it uses to represent the midi file. For both apps, the collection must be moved to the app’s file space for the links to work. You cannot simply open the TOC from downloads. It will open, but it won’t find the scores when you click on the song title. You must move or copy the collection from downloads (using the ipad’s files app) to the pdf reader’s space. Once you have done that, you can create a short cut to the TOC using the Shortcuts app. Just make sure you have selected the TOC from the app space as the file you want to open. Once you have it set up, the collection will work as easily as it does on Windows or Mac OS.
Like MacOS, there is no default player for midi files on Ipad OS. NS Midi Player is available for free in the Apple store. With its limitations, IOS is not able to install a default player for midi files. You will have to select Midi Player from the app list that should appear when you tap the midi file icon in one of the scores.
Android
As with Ipad OS, Adobe Reader for Android cannot follow the links in the Table of Contents. Foxit is available for Android, and it can follow the links with the same proviso as Ipad OS: the collection must reside in the Foxit file space. When Foxit is installed, it creates a folder named “Foxit” in the downloads folder. That is where the collection needs to be unzipped. You can copy it there using a “files” app, but it must be one that actually observes and displays the folder structure. Google’s “Files” app does not. I tried an app called File Manager and that worked fine. There was a default player for midi files on the small tablet I own, but you may have to download one. I did try a few and found that “Midi Clef Karaoke Player” worked well and had a decent grand piano sound. It also registered itself correctly for midi files and can be made the default player for them. I was also able to return easily to the score while the midi file played. Depending on your particular tablet you might have to adjust some settings to make this multitasking work. I tried making a short cut to the Table of Contents using a few different “short cut” apps, but the short cuts they created would not function correctly on my tablet. The TOC would open, but the links to the scores would not work. I had to open the TOC from the files option in Foxit to get functional links to the scores. I did find that File Manager has an option to put a short cut to a file on your home screen, but that option must first be enabled in File Manager’s settings. A TOC shortcut created from File Manager worked correctly with Foxit. For convenience, make Foxit the default program for pdf files.