Re: [abcusers] antialiasing and test on ps files

2002-06-15 Thread Jack Campin

> My site, Musica Viva, includes more than 500 PDFs and a few thousand
> ABCs, but GIF is still the main format for sheet music on the site.
> There are a number of reasons for this:

>  d) Viewable on any computer - Ever tried to open a really big PDF file
> on a old computer?

Isn't a Mac SE/30 old and isn't an Apple service manual big?  No problem
there.  The screen rather than the computer is usually the limiting
factor; my usual monitor is an A3 greyscale, ideal for viewing PDFs,
currently attached to an LC475.  It doesn't feel a lot different to a
functionally identical screen attached to an SE/30.


>  k) I'm a professional - In an ideal world I would have been able to
> make a living giving people music to play, but this world is far
> from ideal. That by site actually costs me a lot of money!

What he said.  Some of the requests I get from Internet freeloaders
oughta be bronzed.  My favourites are the ones who think I ought to
spend a whole lot of money on document authoring software or server
database integration so as to give information away for free in a way
that suits them better.

===  ===


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Re: [abcusers] antialiasing and test on ps files

2002-06-15 Thread Phil Taylor

I wrote:

>Eric wrote:
>>If you want to have a look, I've copied the test files here :
>>
>>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.gif and
>>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.pdf
>>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.ps
>>
>
>This seems to make my point exactly.  I've put up a picture containing
>screen captures of princess.gif (captured from my browser) and princess.pdf
>(captured from Acrobat Reader 4.0) so you can see the results on my screen.
>The top picture is the gif.  The pdf is actually rather better than
>average (only the text seems to be antialiassed here), but is still clearly
>inferior in quality to the gif.
>
>See
>http://www.barfly.dial.pipex.com/princess.gif

Perhaps I should say that the results are quite different when printed on
a Postscript printer.  I printed all three files out on my HP 6MP Laserjet
(600 dpi postscript laser printer - old and slow, but very good quality).

The gif was good quality (just like the screen picture).

The pdf was perfect.

The postscript would have been perfect if the printer had had the correct font
for the title and composer.  As it was, it substituted Courier font, which
looks a bit naff.

Conclusions
If you know that the recipient wants to print out the music, and has a
postscript printer, and the file size is irrelevant, then pdf is the best
choice.  Under all other circumstances gif is better.

Phil Taylor


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Re: [abcusers] antialiasing and test on ps files

2002-06-15 Thread Frank Nordberg



Forgeot Eric wrote:
> 
> I don't really agree, even if you're right in some extends :
> A gif file (I mean a partition) that looks cool on a browser with
> 16 colours is ci. 9 ko. The same in ps is 29 ko, but converted in
> pdf it's only 11 ko (I've tried for a small tune).

Well, yes and no, Eric. The difference in size between a gif and a pdf
file isn't nealy as big as some people belive, but there is a difference.

Ghostview seems to create fairly large gifs. The equivalent
BarFly/Graphic Converter output is only half the size. A Musica Viva
style GIF would be even smaller.

As for Postscript files - it's not unusual for a file created by one
application to be four or five times as large as a similar file created
by a different application. This difference is mostly, but not
completely, evened out when the file is converted to pdf.

(Of course, if file size is the *only* issue, you should just post the
abc. In this particular case, you only need 806 bytes for that.)

---

My site, Musica Viva, includes more than 500 PDFs and a few thousand
ABCs, but GIF is still the main format for sheet music on the site.
There are a number of reasons for this:

  a) Old habit - When I started the site, PDF simply wasn't a serious alternative.

  b) File size - The difference between a single PDF and a single GIF
might not be
 so big, but how about 8000+ of them? I already use more than 200 of
the 50 MBs
 I have available, so I have to be very careful to make evetyrhing
as compact
 as possible.

  c) Viewable on any browser - I happen to be a firm supporter of the anybrowser
 campaign ( http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/ ). GIF is by far the format
 that comes closest to that ideal.

  d) Viewable on any computer - Ever tried to open a really big PDF file
on a
 old computer?

  e) Flexibility - Unlike PDFs, GIFs can be embedded in a html page,
opening up
 a large nuber of options (to many to list here).

  f) Reliability - GIFs are far more rugged than PDFs. I don't have to
worry about
 broken files, and I don't have to worry about people being unable
to read
 the file because of some stupid software incompaibility.

  g) Speed - GIFs load faster than PDFs even if they're the same size.

  h) No plug-ins required - Let's face it, there are lots of computers
that don't
 have Acrobat Reader installed. There are lots of users who have no idea
 what to do about it. There even are lots of older computers that simply
 don't have enough muscle to run such a heavy porgram.

  i) Security - The way I've set up Musica Viva makes it hard for people to
 steal the content of the site.

  j) It's good enough - The GIFs at Musica Viva are good enough for everyday
 use. You can read the sheet music, and you can play from it. What more
 do you expect for free?

  k) I'm a professional - In an ideal world I would have been able to
make a
 living giving people music to play, but this world is far from
ideal. That
 by site actually costs me a lot of money!
 I give away the basics for free just because I like to think of myself
 as a nice peson. But if you want more than that from me, I want to see
 some cash from you. If you *demand* more than that, you've got a serious
 attitude problem.


Frank Nordberg
http://www.musicaviva.com
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Re: [abcusers] antialiasing and test on ps files

2002-06-15 Thread Phil Taylor

Eric wrote:
>If you want to have a look, I've copied the test files here :
>
>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.gif and
>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.pdf
>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.ps
>

This seems to make my point exactly.  I've put up a picture containing
screen captures of princess.gif (captured from my browser) and princess.pdf
(captured from Acrobat Reader 4.0) so you can see the results on my screen.
The top picture is the gif.  The pdf is actually rather better than
average (only the text seems to be antialiassed here), but is still clearly
inferior in quality to the gif.

See
http://www.barfly.dial.pipex.com/princess.gif

Phil Taylor


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[abcusers] antialiasing and test on ps files

2002-06-14 Thread Forgeot Eric

>pages because the file sizes are much larger and the download
times
>that much longer, and because the results on-screen are
unpredictable.

I don't really agree, even if you're right in some extends :
A gif file (I mean a partition) that looks cool on a browser with
16 colours is ci. 9 ko. The same in ps is 29 ko, but converted in
pdf it's only 11 ko (I've tried for a small tune). The difference
is that both ps and pdf will print good, the gif will be ugly if
printed. And it's not true to say there is an antialiasing problem
(at least it can be corrected). 

If you want to have a look, I've copied the test files here :

http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.gif and 
http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.pdf
http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.ps

To see what my antialiased ps files look like, princess.gif is
just a screen-copy of ghostview. I find it strange that most of
users complain about antialiasing with ghostview when the
antialiasing problem just comes from the lines : if the staff
lines are understood to be "quite thick", then ghostview will
"antialias" them and the results will be awfull (some lines will
be antialiased, some others not). Just change the thickness of the
staff lines, and only the notes will be antialiased and the
display nicer. For example, a ps generateed by abcm2pq will begun
such :

%%BeginSetup
/bdef {bind def} bind def
/T {translate} bdef
/M {moveto} bdef
/dlw {0.8 setlinewidth} bdef

 {0.8 setlinewidth} may be too large to display well (but it
prints better on laser printers), so if you edit by hand the ps
files, you can lower the value, to {0.7 setlinewidth} or less (it
displays well with 0.7 for me, at least with graphic alpha turned
to 2, not 4).
You can of course alter the source code of the program in order to
make this value the default (for example to compile 2 programs,
one to generate ps files for the screen, the other for the printer
etc.)




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