On 08-Oct-99 Mats Bengtsson wrote:
>> >>>>> "Mats" == Mats Bengtsson <<a
>> >>>>> href="/tpl/Message/706XQZXDQ/Editor?ToRec=iTo=mats.bengtsson@s3
>> >>>>> .kth.se">[EMAIL PROTECTED]</a>> writes:
>>
>> Mats> I'm sure you discussed this several months ago but are you
>> Mats> sure it's better to use zip than gzip on the files.
>>
>> i'll second that question. i clicked on a link assuming that gv
>> would be popping up momentarily to show me the score, and was
>> disappointed when netscape instead brought up a dialog box asking me
>> where i wanted to put the zip file.
>>
>> this will get old *very* quickly if i want to look at a bunch of
>> scores...
>
> On the other hand (to give a counterargument to my previous
> viewpoint) in many cases there is often more than one output file,
> e.g. in intstrumental pieces with both a score and separate parts.
> That situation is easily handled by zip whereas the traditional UNIX
> solution is to make a gzipped tar file, which is harder to handle
> for a Windows user unless he has WinZip installed.
I've been thinking about this and have done some experiments:
.ps can be opened directly by Ghostscript straight from a web
browser on both Windows and Unix.
.ps.gz can be opened directly by Ghostscript from the browser on
Windows and Unix, but Netscape 4.06 on NT corrupts the filename
to _ps.gz which Ghostscript doesn't understand.
.ps.zip can't be opened directly on anything but is the easiest format
for a Windows user, /especially/ when containing multiple
files.
.pdf can be opened directly by Ghostscript and Acrobat Reader
straight from a web browser
.pdf.gz can be opened directly by Ghostscript straight from a web
browser
.pdf.zip can't be opened directly from the web browser on any platform
BUT the mutopia ftp server can ungzip files "on-the-fly", ie. if you
request ftp://sca.uwaterloo.ca/pub/Mutopia/something.ps and all that
exists in that directory is something.ps.gz then the ftp server will
un-gzip something.ps.gz and supply it as something.ps.
This would indicate that the way to go is to provide all files as
.ps.gz and .pdf.gz, and provide links to .ps and .pdf without requiring
any extra space on the server. I could then put up a Win32 version of
gunzip for those who want to use the pdf files with Acrobat reader but
download compressed files.
[As an aside, Lilypond files run through ps2pdf look pretty bad
displayed on screen by Acrobat Reader, but when printed out they look
identical to Ghostscript's output of the original ps]
However, the problem of scores still exists - how do you cope with a
.ly file that outputs multiple ps files, or even a score consisting of
multiple .ly files - this scenario is not currently covered by Mutopia.
I haven't quite figured this one out yet so have left the archive as it
was for the time being but will try and sort this out in the coming
week, before too much music starts arriving (! - I haven't had any
yet!).
Chris
--
Chris Sawer - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
