#MusicNotation & PgStrm
36 messages in this thread
Hi everyone-I have a A2000, running Prowrite & PageStream in a reasonably
satisfactory way (though I'd like to have it a tad faster, of course…)
I'm looking for a way to produce what musicians call a "fake book"–a line
of music (treble clef, melody) over which one indicates chords. I don't
think I need a full-blown music DTP program, but maybe I do. Are there any
fonts available for PageStream which give flat, sharp, and natural signs?
Any comments from people who have tried a similar project would be welcome.
On the other hand, if there's a cheapie music publishing program that
you've had good results with, I'd be interested in that as well.
Thanks—-Lee in Largo, Fl
Lee,
You might look into Dr. T's Copyist series, although I'm not certain how
they fit in pricewise for you. There used to be a demo available for it
online in the AmigaArts forum, but I just looked for it and wasn't able to
locate it. If you think that you might be interested, I can search my old
floppies to see if I have a copy.
David
How about The Copyist from Dr. T. It comes in Apprentice and Professional
(supports postscript) versions. I have seen used copies of the Apprentice
version selling very inexpensively. My guess is it would be much wiser in
the long run if you intend to sell the fake book to go with postscript
(Adobe has a font for this) so as to make it readable. Otherwise you could
just use Deluxe Music Construction Kit and some screengrabber to get a
bitmap and add stuff with Deluxe Paint, I guess.
I have Dr. T's, The Copyist DTP (professional), and it will NOT print on a
normal 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper. Its output was set up for music staff paper
which is a little bit longer.
The Copyist manual states that it can create EPS output with TIFF headers
"that some DTP programs can use", but when I try to import it into
PageStream 2.2, it doesn't work. Just EPS comes out as an extremely large
"X" within a rectangle. I haven't had the time to get in touch with Dr.
T's yet, but don't think they will be too interested in trying to make any
changes.
The Copyist IS good for the tons of notational elements it has, but it is
NOT the easiest animal to work with. The output IS publisher quality, but
again, you have to deal with a logical page overlap if you are using
'standard' fanfold paper.
The DMCS output is LOW quality – not really suitable for a fake book.
Perhaps a 'screen grabber' such as Snap could provide a better print, but
you would have to do each screen manually, and would probably never be
able to get an entire page.
Hopefully your request for a musical notation font will work out for you.
Please let us know if it does.
Real World:southern Illinois,USA Internet:ca0008 at siucvmb.siu.edu
Jim,
EPS import into Pagestream can result in a box with a large X in it. If
there is no graphic file header included with the file, or it is in a
format that Pgstr doesn't handle that is all you'll see, a large box, it
doesn't mean it isn't working but that it is working and there is an EPS
image in the box. If you have a Postscript printer (or using POST), resize
the box using constrain or edit the (x,y) percentages of the size and
print it to the Postscript printer. You should get the musical page in a
reduced size that will fit on your 8-1/2 x 11 page, or set the page to
print legal size and adjust the EPS box to fit it.
Chris
Hmmm – so a large X isn't all bad. OK – my next problem is that I don't
have a postscript nor laser printer – just a lowly 24pin. At the same
time, I WOULD like to be able to SEE the "graphics" so I could touch them
up, but if all I can do is resize the output borders and print the result,
then The Copyist -> PageStream connection is of little value, since The
Copyist has its own laser/postscript printer driver.
Real World:southern Illinois,USA Internet:ca0008 at siucvmb.siu.edu
Jim…
If you import the EPS in to ProPage and save it out as a clip, then import
it into PageStream, you will be able to both see and edit thte image…
and you should be able to do the same thing with SoftLogik's Art
Expression when it is released (If it released <g>).
Michael,
I don't understand your last comment about EPS import into PPage.
"…If you import the EPS in to ProPage and save it out as a clip, then
import it into PageStream, you will be able to both see and edit the
image…"
I didn't realize that PPage interpreted EPS files and then rasterized them
for display on screen so you can save them as CLIPS to be used in
Pagestream, or PDraw for that matter.
Chris
Chris…
I'm sorry! I meant to type ProDRAW, _not_ ProPage!
That line should have read: "…If you import the EPS in to ProDRAW and
save it out as a clip…"
Jim
If you don't have a postscript printer and " – just a lowly 24pin", take a
look at the POST PostScript interpreter here in our libraries. You can
output the pagestream page to a disk file and then have POST interpret
that to your printer or screen or as save it as a pic.IFF or all three if
you have enough memory. I use POST ALL the time, it works great!
You can't print directly to POST like the PRT: device but maybe some
interprising Amiga programmer someday will writer a POST printer driver.
Who knows, it could make a wonderful addition to the Amiga DOS.
Look in LIB 6 of AmigaUser for:
POST17.LZH/Bin Bytes: 210944, Count: 109, 09-Apr-92
Title : Post 1.7, a PostScript interpreter
Keywords: POST 1.7 POST17 ALYWARD POSTSCRIPT INTERPRETER
POST is a software based PostScript interpreter, presently running on
the Amiga. Post uses the Arp library (V39+), primarily for its file
requester. You will need at least a megabyte of memory, more for high
density printer output.
Chris
Chris – thanks for the tip on POST – I will have to take a look at it.
Real World:southern Illinois,USA Internet:ca0008 at siucvmb.siu.edu
Jim…
If you import the EPS in to ProDraw and save it out as a clip, then import
it into PageStream, you will be able to both see and edit the image…and
you should be able to do the same thing with SoftLogik's Art Expression
when it is released (If it released <g>).
Lee:
I've just downloaded a MAC TYPE I postscript font that does music
notation. As soon as I can get it converted to PC TYPE I I'll upload it to
the the library. It should be 'plug-n-play' with PageStream.
Michael,
I have the Adobe musical notation typeface Sonata, it doesn't work at all
with Pagestream and some of the characters don't show up in PPage, nor do
they all show up in PDraw, (all are the latest versions too).
Chris
Chris,
I have Sonata on my list of typefaces to buy soon. Have you asked SoftLogik
what might be the problem between it and Pgs?
Rich
Rich,
No I didn't ask Soft-Logik about the Sonata family. I just wish that our
Amiga DTP publishers had adhered to the already established ANSI code
system being used by the MAC DTP publishers and the standard ANSI code
chart. It would have been much easy to transfer from platform to platform.
[sigh] They'll of course blame C='s character mapping, and tell me that
their version of Sonata works fine! Well if I wanted Image Club fonts in
instead of ADobe I would have bought them, but I like Adobe, they are by
far my favorite software publishing company. I just got a FREE update for
TypeAlign from them with an offer to buy one of five families of fonts
offered for $49! I guess I'm gonna get the No Fret Family, list is $349 I
think or $329. How can you turn down a deal like that? The other four
families I either already have, except for one and its another script face,
I have plenty of them and its list value was around $185, so I'd be better
off getting the more expensive one or the $49 offer.
chris
Chris,
No argument about Adobe quality. However, I recently called Image Club
about trouble I was having with some of their fonts. They readily admitted
that there had been problems in the past. They apparently have updated all
their packages very carefully using Fontographer (or maybe Icarus – I can't
remember). They sent me a replacement of every single disk I had bought
from them in the last 2 1/2 years! They looked up my account, faxed me a
list for me to confirm, and the new disks were here in three days!
All the new files look very good. No problems at all. The character mapping
appears to be 'standard.' No more of the occasional discontinuities in the
curved lines of certain typefaces. I really can't see any deviation from
'Adobe quality.' Of course, the variety is not as wide, but the quality is
certainly there.
Rich
Rich,
It sounds like Image Club has improved its self. I had heard
stories about them in the past, and was concerned about compatibility of
their stuff. Adobe had always been very helpful (well for MAC/IBM) and I
do like their stuff! So tell me, which Family of typefaces would you buy,
the Adobe Wood Type 1 pkg# 122,List $185, 6 typefaces (have it already),
Nofret pkg#219, List $370, 6 typefaces (don't have) Park Avenue pkg#25 $95
1 typeface (have it), Poppl-Residenz, 2 faces #254, 2 faces (don't have,
its a calligraphic face) or Rockwell 2 pkg# 163 List $145 (have it). So
for me its either Nofret or Poppl-Residenz, I like both, and have similars
of each, well in weight and somewhat in the styles, like Shelley and
Berthold for scripts and Minister looks a bit like Nofret at first glance.
I don't know, I'll probably go with the larger package, I just can't turn
down an offer to buy another family for so few ($49) dollars. Does Image
Club make offers like that?
Chris
Chris,
Image Club does have package deals. In fact _all_ their deals are package
deals. Sorry, can't help you select a type package ($49 is burning a hole
in your pocket, huh?). That kind of thing tends to be a matter of personal
taste, and whatever font happens to be needed at the time to get a job
done.
Rich
You don't understand what the problem is. It has nothing to do with the
Amiga's character mappings. There are two types of font encoding. We (and
most people) support Adobe Standard Encoding. This is a standard in which a
certain set of characters are always in the same place. This is the way
PostScript fonts started off. This is what PageStream uses. Some newer
fonts use font specific encoding. This is basically a way to stuff more and
different characters into a PostScript font. Only thing is, this varies
from font to font and PageStream (and other Amiga programs) don't read the
font specific encoding (yet). So the characters in the fonts are not all
found and they're not all in the right place.
Michael Soft-Logik
You need to make the distinction between ASCII, ANSI, and encodings. ASCII
is a definition that matches byte values 0 to 127 with characters (A..Z,
a..z, punctuation, etc.) along with some control characters. ANSI – well,
I think you confused ASCII with ANSI. There is an ANSI escape sequence and
encoding standard, but I don't see how it fits into this discussion. (A
variant of ANSI is used in Amiga console windows, or on "ANSI" IBM BBSes.)
Then there's encodings – a more general concept that maps byte values to
glyphs. In PostScript, when characters are printed, there's first a
translation from byte values to character names. For example, an 'A'
character is mapped to a name /A, and ',' maps to /comma. So in
PostScript, they've added a level of indirection that uses glyph names
instead of raw byte numbers in fixed positions. A PostScript font, then,
consists of nothing more than a dictionary of entries named with these
"/comma" style names. The encoding happens elsewhere. Some of it can
occur in PostScript, some of it occurs in the application software, that
might map a certain key sequence to a certain byte value, which maps to a
certain glyph, depending on the encoding. The "Adobe Standard Encoding" is
a recommended map between byte values (0..255) and glyphs. Any Amiga
screen font might have a different encoding – character 65 might not be
'A'. This is especially true in the upper and lower ranges of byte values,
which might be carry-overs from other computers. For example, you see
public domain screen fonts that have Mac glyphs in Mac encoding positions,
not Amiga encoding positions.
John,
I guess my ASCII/ANSI knowledge needs to be improved vastly. I found
that some of my .AFM files were munged and this was the root of my
problems getting Pagestream to display the special character set. Somehow,
PPage was able to use those same .AFM files to properly generate the
characters when fontmanager in PPage generated the compugraphic files.
Your description of encoding is appreciated, thank you.
Chris
Just wait til programs start using Unicode instead of ASCII. I think
there's some 18,000 glyphs and glyph names in that encoding system – all
the symbols in common use in mankind. Another interesting aside – Type 1
fonts were/are limited to 256 glyphs, but maybe PostScript Level 2 fixed
that. Keep your chin up, you're in the trenches when it comes to DTP, and
I still consider you an expert.
Me, an expert? Oh contrare monseiur, [sp?]
I understand what I need to do, but I get lost sometimes trying to
explain it correctly while so many others get a chance to critique it.
However, I am prepared to learn or relearn something, when its shown to be
done a different way. As for the trenches, they're a bit mucky down here,
and my hip boots are kinda dry rotted to say the least.
I'd like to know what the differences are in the two versions of .AFM
files I was using. One version did not properly work the special character
codes with Pagestream and the other version works fine. The one version
that didn't work completely was generated by Metamorphosis, BUT, PPage
used the same .AFM to make its compugraphic files and they work fine and
produce the special characters correctly. There is also a difference in
file size averaging about 4K to the plus side.
Chris
John,
Just to keep you updated, my latest Adobe font, straight out of the
wrapper. Berthold SCript. Using the Adobe provided .AFM file is exhibiting
the same problems that was found when using the Metamorphosis generated
AFM files. The older Adobe .AFM files work OK with Pagestream, now it seems
that not only do Metamorphosis Professional generated .AFMs don't work
completely with Pagestream (special character like eacute), but the Adobe
provided NEW .AFMs don't either. Go figure? It's a shame that Mirror Image
went out of business, I spoke to him about making a GUI .AFM converter or
adding it to MIFont, but it never happened. I wonder what was changed that
broke Pagestream's ability to find these special character codes?
Chris
Chris,
Adobe's .AFM files choke Pgs?!
Uh Oh. That's bad. Are you talking about IBM Fonts or Mac fonts?
Rich
I'm no Pagestream expert, I just fielded the question about encoding
vectors…
Chris:
I've got Lassaus (from the DTP forum MAC FONTS section working just fine
in PageStream. I've no idea if it will suit Lees needs, but it is kinda
neat. I'll upload it tonight to lib 6.
make that library 13.
I'll take a look at it, Library 13 you say? Ok, I'll do my
bro/lib:all/age:1 like I usually do.
chris
Thanks Michael & Chris for the input. One very basic question: I hven't
used any but the standard-issue fonts with pagestream. I downloaded and
unpacked them okay, but where do I put them? The PS font Drawer? The PGS
font drawer? Another drawer?
Sorry to occupy the forum's time with very basic questions, but that's
where I am on the learning curve. Thanks again—Lee
Lee:
Actually, you can put them anywhere you like 🙂
They won't be recognized unitl you add them to the fontlist using
FontManager.
My suggestion is to create a separate directory for each of your type I
fonts in a directory called TYPEI (or something creative) that is in the
PSFonts directory specified in your PageStream GLOBAL PATHS settings.
My pagestream directory structure looks like this:
WORK:PageStream/PSFonts/<here's where my font sub-dir's go>
^
|
This is where my CGTriumvirate, TYPEI, etc. go.
The, in the TYPEI drawer, I keep subdirectories that contain
each of the typeI files (AFM, PFB, etc) for each font.
Now, that's the easy part 🙂 For each font you add, you need to use the
FontManager from within PageStream to ADD that font to PageStreams
fontlist. Look at the PgS manual and try it. If you have problems, let us
know!
Lee,
Pagestream is versatile enough with its font management that you can put
those fonts anywhere you want, and using the GLOBAL MENU | Set/Save Paths
option or directly in the font window by selecting Font Manager you can
enter and save the path to point the way to the directory you placed those
fonts. You can move them in and out of your pagestream font path. Use them
now, move them out when no longer needed for the next project. Reduces
time loading and memory used too.
No need to be sorry, that is what this message area is for, questions
and answers on Word Processors and Desktop Publishing. I'm sure Michael
from Soft-Logik will probably answer your question too, when he checks in
like he does from time to time, but we like to toss out some help ASAP.
Chris
Thanks Chris, thanks Michael; will try that out and report on progress.
——–Lee
Sonata uses font specific encoding I believe. Neither PageStream or ProPage
can handle that correctly at this time.
Michael Soft-Logik