Some experimenting with the tune book mentioned above has resulted in a rather handy concept for putting strange things into documents.

The program I used to set the scores for the tunebook is an ancient one, and was giving me some problems running on my current WinXP machine. (It was written for WWG3.11, I think.)

As described above, I used a PostScript printer driver to print to file to get an eps file, used ghostview to edit the eps, pasted the edited eps files into Word, and used a PostScript printer.

I have found that Photoshop Elements 2.0 will import and rasterize the .eps files that my PS printer driver produces. Once imported into PE2, they can be converted easily to any graphic file format you want, and resized to whatever you need. I have NOT found any other general purpose graphics program that will reliably import .eps print files.

Admittedly, PE2 is a commercial program that you'll have to pay some bucks for, but at $70 US it's a real bargain. If you have a digital camera, you need it anyway. (Personal opinion, but there is no other program available that makes it as easy to work miracles on those over/underexposed shots you are going to get with most digital cameras any of us can afford.)

Anyone can download a PostScript printer driver from Adobe - no cost. (I currently use the HP LJ1200PS driver, since I have that printer; but I've also used others.) You do not need a PostScript printer to install a "New Printer" using this driver in any version of Windows, since you will use it only to print to file. Any program that can print anything can be "printed to file" using the PS driver, given a filename with the extension .eps, and imported into PS2 to make a .bmp, .jpg, .tif, or whatever graphic format works for you. Since the .eps file is a vector graphic format, you can select any resolution you want during the import. Once the graphic is sized the way you want it, you can paste it into another program like Word just like clip art. You don't really even need to know anything about PostScript, except that the print file needs to have a filename with the .eps extension.

I've just finished converting the 848 .eps (print to file) "pictures" of tunes from the book. Using batch mode, PS2 asks, for each image, what resolution you want for the conversion; but once you set the first one, it "remembers" the setting, so all you have to do is click "OK" once for each image. Approximately 2.3 seconds per picture, and now they're all .psd pictures (PS2's native format) that I can see and edit in PS2, or convert to something like .jpg to paste back into the book, so that the book can be printed on any printer.

(Batch mode for conversion between graphic formats can run unattended. Since .eps loading is an import, you have to give it the OK for each image. Conversion from one "normal" graphic format to another one shouldn't take more than 5 or 10 minutes for this whole set of pictures, and requires nothing more than "turning it on" and letting it run. I put them in .psd format, rather than going direct from .eps to .jpg because I may want to resize, and otherwise edit, some of them for some other uses.)

If you're willing to come up with Photoshop Elements 2.0 this is a "no-brainer" way of getting anything that any program can print into a graphic that you can put into any other program that accepts clip art. (Actually, 2 or 3 working brain cells wouldn't hurt, but it really is easy - at least in my experience with it to date.)

John