Failure to download Cottrau's passatempi musicali

[David Wilson]

I have repeatedly attempted to download this pdf file without success. It is pointed to by the link labelled "almost complete scan" on this page. I have so far only tried to download it with an IPad. Safari simply fails to to download the file without giving any indication of error. However, the browsers I have tried in two other Apps complete but return errors ("download failed").

[Choralia]

Attempting to open large pdf files in a browser is usually quite critical. Browsers (as well as the relevant plugins to open pdf files) are not designed to handle large files. They expect relatively small files that can be downloaded and displayed within few seconds. With large files the browser's timeout may occur before the data transfer is complete, especially if the connection is not very fast.

This file is extremely large (142 MB), so you definitely should right-click the download link and save the file locally first. This procedure worked fine for me.

Max

[jossuk]

I downloaded the large file to my computer, but the following pages were blank, and were labeled as "missing" within the document:
33, 39, 77 - 78. 132-133, 166-173.

[David Wilson]

Thank you for the replies. It seems to be an issue with the IPad. Its native browser (Safari) doesn't have a "download" option because there's no file system to download anything to. You have to wait for Safari to finish retrieving a file, when it will either display the file, or give you an option of "opening" it in any apps you have which are capable of properly dealing with it. I have several apps which are capable of displaying pdf files, and they all have the ability to directly "download" files from the web, but none of them was able to download this file successfully from the IMSLP website.

Encouraged by your replies, I was able to download the file to a memory stick at a local library and upload it to my dropbox account. The dropbox app on my IPad wasn't able to completely fetch the file to make a local copy, and all but one of the relevant apps were just as incapable of downloading it from my dropbox account as from the IMSLP site. One app, however, PDFReader Pro, did succeed in doing so, and once this app got a copy, it was possible to pass one on to any of the other pdf displaying apps. Thanks again for your help.