Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 09:07 PM

I just received an email ad from ScanSoft - makers of one of the OCR programs I use with my scanner, telling me that "As a user of TextBridge you're entitled to a tremendous discount - Zeon DocuCom PDF Creator for just $49.99."

Going to the Zeon DocuCom PDF Creator website, I find that the regular price is $49.99, so what's the tremendous discount??????

The Zeon creator is simply a "print driver" that will print a PDF of almost anything you can send to your printer. It "prints to file" so it creates a .PDF of anything printable. Just like Adobe Distiller ($200) does.

Since I have distiller, I won't be testing this, but ScanSoft is a reputable company - and TextBridge is absolutely the best OCR program of several I've used.

From ScanSoft:

"We've tested DocuCom and it works seamlessly with virtually any Windows application. You simply open the document that you want to convert to .pdf and then go to the print menu. DocuCom will appear as one of your print options. Simply click on it and your document is automatically converted into a .pdf file that you can share with anyone regardless of whether they have a PC or a Mac."

Still not freeware, but maybe a little less messy than trying to "brute force" through ghostwrite????

Now .pdf back to plain text ...?

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 11:32 PM

Thanks John in Kansas, this seems to confirm that PDF995 is great value for money - it's either Free or $US9.95.

I've been using SKINK or iabc freeware to print songs with lyrics and chords (using abc notation language). PDF995 produces excellent PDF output to send sheet music to other musos via email. The combination of software is free, simple and works well.

Regards, John

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From:
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 11:41 PM

There's also FinePrint/FinePDF as well.

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 11:26 AM

I don't suppose their will be any interest here but I have written a small Windows program that makes the running of abc2midi, abcm2ps and ghostscript easier.

It was written to test abc is valid before posting to folkinfo and just consists of a text box into which abc can be loaded from a file or pasted, and 2 buttons: "test ghostcript" and "test midi".

As it stands, it is only useful for visual/audio checking and has no relevance to this thread but... It would only be a small task to modify the program to enable it to run abcm2ps and ghostscript to produce a pdf file.

The program as it stands is at http://www.folkinfo.org/abctest.zip. The zip file contains the exe which can go anywhere and an ini file which needs editing to match paths with the actual locations of the conversion programs and needs to be located in the Windows directory.

Jon

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 12:31 PM

Well I find it useful Jon :-)

Ed

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Mar 03 - 12:17 PM

John in Brisbane,

I did a search to find this thread because I remembered reading your remarks about the PDF995 program. I need a distiller to make a PDF file to send a newsletter to the printer I work with on campus. They have the usual Adobe software, but think they should be able to open this, so I'll be downloading and installing it today.

Have you used this for print documents or just online? Have you tried any of the extensions since you last reported about the program? What can you tell us after a few months of using this software? I'll be using it with Win2000 and MS Word or MS Publisher.

Thanks!

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: GUEST,John in Brisbane
Date: 25 Mar 03 - 08:25 PM

Not a lot to add. No, I haven't played with the extensions - in fact I can't even recall what they are.

Not too surprisingly I mainly use the PDF creation for sheet music. So if I'm getting together with some people I'll send somne music in advance. I must re-read the thread above because on one occasion the chords were mangled at the other end and were barely readable. Other than that it means that fellow musos don't need any of the Midi or ABC applications, except for Media Player.

Regards, John

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: MMario
Date: 23 Jul 03 - 01:47 PM

See the NOTEWORTHY COMPOSER forum here

I just tried it and it worked a treat!!!!

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From:
Date: 26 May 04 - 05:45 PM

Found this web-page which talks about making a PDF archive of several PDF pages.

http://www.sheetmusicarchive.net/makepdf.html

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Thread closed temporarily because it's been a target for a heavy barrage of Spam. If you have something to add to the discussion, contact me and I'll reopen it.
-Joe Offer-