Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: IvanB
Date: 12 Mar 02 - 04:40 PM

I've never had printing be a problem in GSView. John in Brisbane is referring to converting to graphics formats. And it's not the problem of GSView. In testing it this morning with a 200 page catalog, it created a 25mb bmp file, so obviously the whole catalog was converted. Forwarding to the second page and converting produced another bmp file of the same size. And, when either of these were opened in a graphics editing program, only the first page appeared. I believe that the problem lies in the fact that graphics editors are designed to edit files that occupy just one page, of whatever size it might be. Thus, they have no facilities for paging through a document. So the solution seems to be to convert each page as a separate file.

I have a script to do this job but, unfortunately it's in a proprietary program which isn't free.

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Mar 02 - 02:15 PM

Anyone wanting to know more about GhostScript and GSView can download the Ghostscript User Manual from FTP.

There are two versions posted, and the latest will probably show as gs5man_e.pdf. Right click it and select copy to file.

The manual was about a 3 minute download on my POTS connection, and is about 26 pages. It gives a good summary of a lot of things you can do with it, but a warning is in order that "it ain't that complicated" if you plan to stick to the simple stuff.

Re: printing past the first page. - PostScript, of which PDF is a subset language, processes documents one page at a time. In GSView, you may have to manually select "next page" and print each page separately(?). A common failure, in my experience, when importing downloaded PDF, EPS, etc files into GSView is the error message that says "page breaks not properly marked," indicating that some distiller setups do produce "defective" multisheet documents.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: IvanB
Date: 12 Mar 02 - 02:05 PM

John, I think your not opening the document for viewing in GSView is your downfall re: only page 1 converts. If the document is showing on the screen, the file conversion box has all the pages listed at the right. Although they're all selected by default, you can click on any individual page to convert only that page. A bit tedious for a long document, but it does work.

BTW, I'm using GSView beta 4.12, with Ghostscript 7.03. But I'm pretty sure the page selection thing goes back several versions.

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 12 Mar 02 - 08:01 AM

A minor correction to the above re the GNU version(s). These are source code written in C and to date have not been compiled to run on Windows.

Re John in Kansas mention of the $50 CD. The creator of GSView is Australian and the CD is still available. It contains every version of GhostScript and GSView ever written in every conceivable language and source code. It is almost certainly worth it if you need to delve into the inticacies of the code or compare multiple versions. You could for instance re-invoke the script that converts PDF to GIF format. For a mug user like me I suspect that the current downloads will be more than I'll ever need (or understand).

Regards, John

PS While this thread has become quite technical, the basic functionality is quite easy to master.

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: GUEST,John in Brisbane
Date: 11 Mar 02 - 08:25 PM

A few postscripts (excuse the pun):

- There is indded a Mac version of GhostScript

- While the current 7.04 version of Aladdin GhostScript is strictly shareware, there are other GNU versions which are completely free. I have not used the GNU version. There is no masking on the conversion files to JPG, BMP etc (which is my main interest) nor have I seen it on PDF printed output.

- The main GhostScript page badly needs an index of compatibilty. If you use a PC make sure that the Zip fule you download contains the letters 'WIN'. There are so many dirrent versions of source code, Linux etc that you can waste time downloading the wrong version(s).

- The larger of the two downloads is GhostScript - about 6 Megs as I recall.

- You could use Print Screen to copy parts of a PDF file to the Clipboard, but the resolution is indifferent.

- The GhostScript writers are very cautious about all things legal and will not enable direct conversion to GIF. Not sure about earlier versions.

- One or both of the programs has a very comprehensive user manual. You can probably tell that I haven't bothered to look at it.

- The advertising industry uses PDF's as a convenient method of sending colour ads and Point od Sale materials to clients. In the last week I had to import some Acrobat (PDF) files into Power Point. The only way that I could do this (other than re-scanning was via GhostScript). At first glance there appears to lots of software to do this, but upon further investigation it transpires that they all require the full commercial version of Adobe Acrobat.

- The best image viewer that I've encountered is also FREE. INFANVIEW should be easy to find. It does conversions to scads of fornats, reduces images to 2 bit B&W (for SharpEye) and all the other guff that good image editors do. You can view all your image files in the same directory as thumbnails or you can flick through them at full size by repeatedly pressing the SPACEBAR, very handy if you have loads of scanned tunes, as I do.

Query please. Some archives on the Web bind their sheet music into multi-page volumes. The experiments I've done to date only allow me to create Page 1 in the converted format, even though GhostView appears to go through the full conversion process - a page at a time. Any clues would be appreciated.

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 11 Mar 02 - 12:13 PM

Doesn't the free demo version of GHOSTSCRIPT put a big message across the middle of the PDF Files ?

I use the (free evaluation) version of FinePrint PDFfactory - just a printer driver which produces excellent PDF files, with only a very small footnote line telling you that it's the evaluation copy.

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From:
Date: 11 Mar 02 - 11:13 AM

I was just reading about that, using Ghostscript, etc, on a PDF site. Sounds like something I'll have to try out. Thanks for the suggestion. The reference on this web-site, suggested installing a Postscript compatible printer, Saving to a file formatted for this printer, giving you a Postscript file, and then putting it through Ghostscript, so you can create the original PDF file. Saves on the low resolution GIF file. There are versions of Ghostscript for Windows, and Linux, and I would assume Mac as well.

Subject: RE: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 11 Mar 02 - 10:07 AM

I can support your enthusiasm for GhostScript.

I have been using it for about 10 years as an EPS file editor. For those not familiar - an EPS is an "encapsulated PostScript" file, and is one of the better formats for graphic inserts in production page layout.

The convenient thing is that anything that you can print, can be printed "to file" using the driver for any PostScript printer. Since you're printing to file, you don't even need to have a PS printer - just the driver. Change the default .prn filename extension to .eps and you usually have a serviceable EPS file.

The inconvenient thing is that when you paste it into most layout programs, all you get is a placeholder. You cain't see the picture, so you use GhostView to look at it - and edit it if necessary, before pasting it in. Simple cropping and scaling are a breeze once you learn how to edit the file with your word processor.

(The second clinker in this is that you can't print a document that contains simple eps files except on a PostScript printer - but that's another issue.)

I have used the "freeware" version for quite a while, but recently got an update on CD ($50 US and well worth it) from some guy in Australia. I don't know if he still has it available, but could look up my records if anyone is interested.

John

Subject: Tech: Converting PDF Sheet Music
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 11 Mar 02 - 08:54 AM

There's an increasing amount of printable sheet music on the Web these days and two formats seem to predominate - GIF and PDF (Acrobat PostScript).

The GIF files are compact but tend to be scanned at such a low resolution as to render them useless for further editing, e.g. to cut out piano parts. The PDF's seem to give much better quality for a given file size, but don't allow easy editing.

If I wanted to buy Adobe Acrobat the cost is considerable, so I've been using the FREE versions of GhostScript and GhostView (its GUI interface). You'll find them quite easily with your favourite search engine and they're easy enough to install - make sure they both go in the same directory. BTW you need to download compatible versions of the two pieces of software.

The rest is moderately intuitive. Simply (FILE) SELECT a .PDF file from your disc, press the (FILE) CONVERT option and then follow your nose before saving it with your chosen file format and size. I don't bother actually viewing the file in GhostView because it's time consuming and isn't always reliable on my PC. The more important aspect is the quality of the converted file. I've only used BMP's and JPG's to date.

I've used the BMP format in Sharpeye to convert the music to MIDI files very successfully.

This techy stuff won't be for everybody, but somone may find it handy in future. (ghostview does a heap of other stuff such as creating PDF files or extracting the text from PDF files, but that's not my scene - for the moment).

I'd be keen to hear any feedback.

Regards, John
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