Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?

Subject: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: CapriUni
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 05:30 PM

I use Noteworthy Composer to write my songs, and it meets nearly all my needs beautifully. I love the ease with which I can adjust the look of the printed score, with fonts and margins and staff sizes, and the like.

.... But When I try to "Copy" it, so that I can insert the score into a word processor document (Occassionally, I've wanted to write songs for my fictional characters to sing) either as a Windows clipboard file or a .wmf file, it comes out looking "sloppy" -- text too small to read clearly, with some lines of the staves being extra fat, and the "dot" part of the notes disconnected from their verticals.

So I thought I'd just print the song to my .pdf writer, instead of my physical printer, and insert the pdf file into my document, and then things got really wierd looking.

The g-clef came out as an a. The quarter notes were k's, and the eighth notes came out looking something like k^s.

So that got me wondering: is there a special computer font for musical notation, so that my .pdf writer and reader would know what to do with that strange alien language?

Thanks in advance.... sign me:

"Curious and scratching my head"

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 05:58 PM

Whatever it is that correctly renders the notation on screen should, theoretically, be able to render it in other forms as well.

At worst, there should be some way to save the screen rendition as a graphic "screen-shot" ~ as a .bmp file, say. Once you create such a file, you can either print it directly (from, say MS Paint), or insert it into a Word .doc file that you can easily print, attach to an email, or whatever.

Sorry I'm not able to give more specific and detailed instructions, ut maybe sxomeone else can weigh in on this...

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 06:40 PM

It may be obvious to techies like me I suppose, but there is a font for the 'music bits'. It may however not be an installed font in Windows, but just local to the particular program, so that what gets exported is just a series of number indexes to a font that windows substitutes one of its installed fonts for. That's the Generic Answer!

If you check up on the documentation for your program - I don't use it so I am not familiar with it - you should see if there is supposed to be a font that apparently is not installed currently in Windows. You can then check the Fonts installed - the particular font file might be damaged - and reinstall it if necessary.

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 06:45 PM

Oh - and your current PDF reader and writer may not be able to handle the particular font anyway, so may be substituting another font.

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 06:57 PM

If Noteworthy is able to render the characters correctly when you print directly to your printer (and on screen) then it probably has a music font built in. There are no identifiable font(s) in my Noteworthy program folders, so it must be assumed that they're built into another file, probably directly into the .exe, or are already installed directly in Windows.

If you go to Noteworthy's Help, and put Fonts in for a search string, it tells you that you can select from a font list, but the "fonts" are not identified by any font name(s).

My Noteworthy installation log does show a "copy NWCV15.TTF to Windows\Fonts," so that quite likely is the one you need. If that's the only one Noteworthy uses, Word should be able to use it as well. If it's in your Noteworthy folder but not in Windows\Fonts, it's possible that Noteworthy can use it but Word can't. Copying it to the Windows\Fonts folder should do it.

Depending on how you're making your .pdf files, you may be able to "include fonts" when you make a .pdf. This should embed at least the characters used in the document in the .pdf file so they can be used when the .pdf is printed later on any machine. If you're using one of the simple .pdf makers, and can't embed the fonts that a program uses, you'll need to make all the fonts that Noteworthy uses available when you print the Word file. This usually means copying the fonts to your Windows\Fonts folder, which is how you install them for Windows programs if they're TrueType fonts.

If a .pdf calls for a font that Windows doesn't have, something else will be substituted, both for display and for printing. This is probably what's happening when you get your a k g things. If you can't find Noteworthy's native music font, installing another music font might possibly get a better substitution, but there's no real guarantee. Anastasia is the Windows native music font, but it has a limited set of characters. Maestro and Opus are other widely used ones.

If you can't solve the problem with fonts, it is possible that when you copy from Noteworthy you may be able to use the "Edit | Paste Special" and select a Paste as Graphic or as another format that will give better results. The options offered in the Paste Special dialog will depend on what's in the clipboard.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: GUEST,Fellcat
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 07:18 PM

Get the fonts that come with Lilypond and install them.

In fact, just install Lilypond and use it to typeset your music fragments.

Windows installer: http://lilypond.org/download/binaries/mingw/lilypond-2.6.1-1.exe

The website − http://lilypond.org/web − has the manual and versions for various GNU/Linuces.

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 07:22 PM

Well, here's what Noteworthy has to say about it.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From:
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 08:11 PM

What you need to do, is:

1 - When you have it in Noteworthy the way you want it: Press [PrtScrn]. This will save the screen into the Workspace. Next, use something which will edit a graphic file. The PASTE into a New file in the graphic editor. Cut out the section you need (the music) and save it as a BMP or JPG or GIF file.

2 - Load up Word or other Editor which will accept the graphic format you've saved your music in.

Hope that helps.

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From:
Date: 27 Jul 05 - 08:13 PM

Oh, if you already have it saved in PDF format and it looks good, you can start there instead of in Noteworthy.

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: MMario
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 09:44 AM

I had to update my PDF program to get pdf's from Noteworthy to "print" correctly.

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: CapriUni
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 01:54 PM

Thanks, Guys!

Bev and Jerry and George Seto -- It was copying via Noteworthy's instructions that led to the "sloppy" results, and as far as I can tell, it seems to be doing the same thing as [prnt scrn]. The image of the score (in preview) is such low resolution that all the inconsistancies are just magified when the image is enlarged to readable size. But the "Copy Special" feature, when the score is on screen in edit mode comes out much clearer... I just have to remember to make sure that the score looks on screen the way I want it to on paper (in black, not blue, for example), and to only copy small sections at a time (otherwise, it just comes out very squunched).

JohninKansas -- thanks. I'll have a nose around in the files to see what I find, if anything... If it's just a matter of copying a file from one folder to another, that would be easiest, I think...

MMario -- what did you update your pdf program to? And how expensive was it (The prices for a new download of Adobe pdf writer made my head spin)?

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: MMario
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 01:57 PM

I use PDFcreator - free download - they had a new version come out about the time I needed to make some pdf's - the ones previous hadn't worked - downloaded the new version and they worked.

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 01:59 PM

The method described at the Noteworthy FAQ works, sort of, but the results are as described: "Looks Like SHIT."

The method described by George works, sort of, but a couple of additional steps are suggested. The two methods are pretty much the same, except one works from the main view and the other uses the Print Preview

When you do a screen capture, the capture is at screen resolution and pastes at 72 dpi. This is an extremely poor resolution for printing. You need to capture something that can be scaled down in size, keeping the same total number of pixels, so that the finished object is at 150 dpi or better to get decent printing results.

1. In Noteworthy, use the Zoom tool to enlarge your view (Zoom In) until the picture you want fills as much of the screen as possible.

2. Once the intended picture is as large as you can get it, use Alt-PrtScn to capture the picture to the clipboard.

3. Go to Word and Ctl-V (or Edit | Paste) to insert it in your Word document.

4. When you left click on what you inserted you should get a new toolbar. If it doesn't pop up, go to View | Toolbars and put a check by "Picture." You can leave the toolbar floating in the middle, or you can drag it to the top toolbar.

5. With the picture selected (you clicked on it) click on the "Crop" tool on the Picture Toolbar. The icon for the Crop tool looks like a pair of interlocking Xs (XX).

6. Put your cursor on an edge of the picture, click and hold the left mouse button, and drag the edge in to crop off anything extraneous to what you want.

7. Repeat the crop on the other three edges.

8. At this point you should have the picture you want, but hopefully it will be at least twice as big as you want. Click on the Paint Bucket icon on thePicture Toolbar (Format Picture). Click the "Size" tab. Make sure there's a check in the "Preserve Aspect Ratio" box, and use the Width or Height windows to resize your image.

8a. You can use the "Layout" tab on the Format Picture window to adjust the location of the picture and control how text wraps around it. Note that changes may not take effect until you close the Picture Format window.

9. When you click anywhere on the Word document where there isn't a picture, the Picture toolbar should disappear. Just click a picture to get it back.

If you have a decent graphics program, you can paste from the Clipboard directly to it instead of pasting to Word at step 3. Work the image over in the graphics program, save it, and Insert | Picture in Word when it's ready. You usually must have a blank "canvas" open in most graphics programs, so that you have somewhere to paste. Some programs have an "import from clipboard" command. Photoshop Elements has a File | New from clipboard command. The import and new from clipboard kind of command should create a new canvas of the right size and paste the image on it.

If you use the method given in the Noteworthy FAQ, the print preview puts a full page on screen, and the copy button or an Alt-PrtScn puts the whole page, at 72 dpi, into the clipboard. Assuming that what you want is a small part of the page, you'll have to crop a bunch off, and probably have to enlarge to get anything usable. Enlarging from 72 dpi to a useful print size will nearly always blow-out the picture, since you just don't have enough pixels to work with. Noteworthy also asks to save as .wmf file. Unless you are using Win98 or older, Microsoft recommends now that you forget about using the .wmf format.

If you zoom to as large as you can get in Noteworthy, and use Alt-PrtScn to capture what you see, you'll get the same total number of pixels, but a lot more of them will be within that part of the image you want. When you resize to a smaller picture, you can keep all of the pixels and just put them closer together – getting to the 150 dpi or better that you need for a decent print.

On Screen Capture:

Some Windows computers don't do anything if you use PrtScn alone. Most Windows computers will do the same thing as if you used the preferred key combination Ctl-PrtScn.

Ctl-PrtScn should capture the entire monitor display and put it in the Clipboard.

Alt-PrtScn should capture only the "active window," so in most cases you'll have less to crop off at the edges.

I'm not sure I understand how .pdf is being used by those who've mentioned it, but in general any .pdf should be made directly from a "finished" file and should be an end product. There are ways to use .pdf as an intermediate step between other formats, but they're not often as successful as other methods and aren't recommended very often by "the .pdf guys."

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From:
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 04:35 PM

well I did say that you should get the way you want it before you save it to the clipboard. Definitely get it to the largest size you can as it helps.

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 05:40 PM

Sorry if I missed that George.

Screen captures are generally hard to work with to get good prints, but sometimes they're the only thing you've got. That appears to be the case with Noteworthy. I'm a bit puzzled that the Noteworthy FAQ would suggest doing the capture from the print preview, as I don't see any way to make anything useful out of that - for much of anything I'd want to do.

A method I've used in the past with good success is to use native PostScript (not PDF). If you can print it, you can load a PostScript printer driver and print to file. This gives you a PostScript file for the document. A PostScript file is actually a "program" for drawing the page, so there's no "bit content" involved. Since PS is a vector graphic script, in plain ASCI characters, you can look at it in a text editor or Word, and/or you can use GhostView/GhostScript to "get to the innards." In the script, you should be able easily to identify any fonts that are used, and provide them for printing - but you can only print the script usefully if you have a real PostScript printer* to send it to.

Unfortunately, if there are embedded "bit-graphics" in the file, they get passed through in binary form, and there's not much you can do to improve on what you start with.

If you can edit the PostScript program (the script) to what you want, some graphics editing programs can import it to make a usable .jpg or other format thing you can use. (Most graphics programs can only work with single page scripts.) When you do the import you usually can specifiy the dpi you want, and I often pass stuff to bits at about 600 dpi. You can always reduce it, but increasing after it's been imported works less well.

*Many "PostScript capable" printers may read a !PS file and process the image in PostScript, but actually print the file in the printer's native language. With drivers for recent HP models, you'll get a PCL format when you print to file. You'd need to use a driver from one of the older printers to actually print the !PS. The HPIIIP with PostScript cartridge is one I've used quite a lot, or you can use nearly any of the Linotronic drivers to get a "true !PS" file. Drivers for these will be on any recent Windows version Instl disks, or can be downloaded from Adobe (free).

This method "ain't for the faint of heart" but often gives excellent results once you work out how to do it. To go very far with it, you'll want the PDFReference16.pdf, which you can download for free from Adobe now - just so you can look up command formats, etc.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Music fonts for .pdf files?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 28 Jul 05 - 08:25 PM

I wouldn't touch Noteworthy with a bargepole for quality output of any kind. If you have a decent vector (illustration) program, though, you should be able to open a wmf file in it. Vectors are resolution-independent, so if you're careful you ought to be able to re-size it (you may have to combine or group several hundred separate vector objects first) and save in raster format, or even print directly from the vector file. Don't open it in Word, though; the results will be disgusting.

In the end you get what you pay for. Noteworthy is a handy sequencing program, though not as compatible as it ought to be with industry standards. It isn't designed to print scores.