Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
dc wrote: David W. Fenton écrit: But, again, the problem as I see it is *not* with Finale, but with Acrobat's incorrect line smoothing. I don't know why Finale sends multiple thin lines instead of a single line with a particular thickness to the print driver, but perhaps there's a reason for that. This is what MM says. But then why doesn't Sibelius have the problem? A few years ago, someone explained, after looking at the Postcript description, that lines (staff lines, beams) in Finale were made of several thin lines. Whether this is true or not, the fact is that at certain magnifications you can see these multiples lines in staff lines, beams, etc. But not in Sibelius PDFs (nor in MacFinale PDFs). And this is what makes for the crappy look. On the other hand, there is no difference in the look of all the fonts, including the music fonts. As someone else pointed out, the program itself (Finale or Sibelius) generates the data it needs to get the image on the screen, and then that is sent to the OS or to the Postscript interpreting program. Apparently Finale is using a particular routine (possibly subcontracted from a third party?) to generate its Compile Postscript Listing but when the program is set to print to a PDF printer such as Distiller or PDF995 or some other pdf creation program, the image data from Finale is interpreted by a different routine. The difference between Sibelius and Finale when turned into PDFs may simply be the different approach each program takes to generating the lines to show onscreen. Those differing approaches to generating the original data may explain the differing results when printing to PDF files. So I guess one could claim that the fault may lie with Finale, when the same PDF program is used to print to pdf from Sibelius and from Finale and the on-screen results are different. But the fact that some people are seeing great onscreen pdf files from Finale while others aren't says to me that the problem lies in the different approaches to PDF creation that the different 3rd-party pdf creation applications take. And that isn't Finale's fault. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
dc wrote, on 9/24/2007 2:02 AM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] écrit: This does not address the fact that Finale's Compile Postscript Listing function produces a perfect display. Finale prints to Postscript and compiles Postscript quite differently. Does this work with any kind of font? TT or PS or OT? Yes, it works with all of them. I know because I use a mixed library of fonts (about 7,000 of them, actually). So far (with Finale 2K7) it has compiled listings that produces perfect PDFs. The easiest sequence for me (because it's so fast) is to compile the listing, drop the PS file onto GhostScript (which unlike Distiller, doesn't pre-load the whole font library), and have GhostScript convert to PDF. When I have multiple documents (several movements, title page, cover, instructions done in, say, MSWord) then I go to docPrint Pro (about $40) to assemble the whole mess into a single PDF document. docPrint Pro reads EPS, PS, PDF, DOC, and numerous other formats. As I say, the only thing Finale's Compile Postscript Listing doesn't do is compile the TIFF graphics with it. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
dc wrote, on 9/24/2007 8:12 AM: I can't get Compile PS to work. Finale crashes if I include the fonts. And it gives nice staff lines if I don't, but without the fonts (except Maestro, for some reason)... The resulting PDF has only two fonts listed: Maestro and Courier. Courier is the normal substitute for missing fonts. Finale itself crashes, not the compilation process? Faced with this issue, here's what I would do: I would load my usual template and try to compile a new (otherwise blank) document (and save it under a usable name). If the template compilation crashed, I'd do a data check on the document, especially for missing fonts (save under a new name, always). If the template still crashed after a missing font check, I'd go into the expressions, articulations, lyrics, default fonts (tuplets, too), etc., and check their fonts -- and swap fonts on anything that might not be there that data check doesn't find. For some reason, data check doesn't seem to find fonts that are in the Windows substitution library. I always check documents for the old Times and Helv names and get rid of those; Helv was always in the tuplet definitions. (It would be easier to use Tobias's TGTools font lister, but that feature always crashes for me.) With such a large library, I also find defective fonts now then, as well as mis-named fonts. (Free fonts in particular suffer from those who fail to change the Postscript font name when working with another base font.) If the template didn't crash (or was fixed by data check and font swaps), I would then begin adding expressions or other items that I used in the document that wouldn't compile -- until it crashed again. (And keep saving under new names!) That would identify the first culprit font. I'd continue until all the fonts either passed or crashed it. When I finally got through a clean compilation, I'd load up the original document and go through the font-cleaning process: data check, font swaps, etc., until that document passed. Once satisfied by all this, I'd go back to my template and clean it of bad fonts, and save it as my new default template. Can you tell I've been through this kind of stuff before? :) Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 24 Sep 2007 at 8:02, dc wrote: David W. Fenton écrit: But, again, the problem as I see it is *not* with Finale, but with Acrobat's incorrect line smoothing. I don't know why Finale sends multiple thin lines instead of a single line with a particular thickness to the print driver, but perhaps there's a reason for that. This is what MM says. That's interesting. But then why doesn't Sibelius have the problem? Obviously because they use different methods for rendering than Finale, methods that Acrobat Reader has not broken in later versions. A few years ago, someone explained, after looking at the Postcript description, that lines (staff lines, beams) in Finale were made of several thin lines. You can easily see this in my PDFs at very high magnifications. Whether this is true or not, the fact is that at certain magnifications you can see these multiples lines in staff lines, beams, etc. But not in Sibelius PDFs (nor in MacFinale PDFs). And this is what makes for the crappy look. On the other hand, there is no difference in the look of all the fonts, including the music fonts. Look, the way Finale did it worked until someone else broke it. Granted, the logic behind Finale's method is obscure to me and seems, well, kind of backward (a 1990s-era approach to the problem of putting different line thicknesses on screen and on paper), but the point is that it worked in the past just fine, and somebody else did something that broke it. That said, given that there's a different way to do it that would entirely eliminate the problem, I don't have an explanation of why MM doesn't change it. But my bet is that there are reasons for this, reasons that have to do with the internal architecture of Finale and how it communicates with graphic rendering devices (i.e., screen and printer). That it hasn't been fixed probably means that it isn't as simple as it looks from the outside. I hate it when my clients tell me that some alteration to the application I programmed for them will be easy. They don't know jack about what it takes to make the changes they request. And neither do we. The programmers at MM are not bad people -- they are just like all of us, with limited time to put into a myriad of problems. Given that those Finale-generated PDFs print just fine, I can see why they wouldn't worry too much about fixing the onscreen display, especially if such a fix would cascade through to other subsystems of Finale's graphical output. Also, since they now fixed the PS problems on Windows (at least on WinXP -- I just can't understand why a fix for WinXP would fail to work on Win2K), at least Windows users who require better onscreen rendering now have the compile-to-PS option. That is exactly the kind of situation where I as a programmer would treat such a feature request as low priority -- if very few people are truly bothered by it, and if the people who are have a viable workaround for the problem. That doesn't mean I wouldn't like it fixed. It just means that I can conceive of good reasons why it hasn't been fixed. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
AW: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
In the older days compile postscript listing depended on the default printer setting, so at least you could do something to steer Finale in the right direction. I haven't used this for years, so I don't know if it's still so. As I said, PDFs work ok for me. I have even used PDFs to create EPS, with success... Kurt -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von dhbailey Gesendet: Montag, 24. September 2007 12:37 An: finale@shsu.edu Betreff: Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale dc wrote: David W. Fenton écrit: But, again, the problem as I see it is *not* with Finale, but with Acrobat's incorrect line smoothing. I don't know why Finale sends multiple thin lines instead of a single line with a particular thickness to the print driver, but perhaps there's a reason for that. This is what MM says. But then why doesn't Sibelius have the problem? A few years ago, someone explained, after looking at the Postcript description, that lines (staff lines, beams) in Finale were made of several thin lines. Whether this is true or not, the fact is that at certain magnifications you can see these multiples lines in staff lines, beams, etc. But not in Sibelius PDFs (nor in MacFinale PDFs). And this is what makes for the crappy look. On the other hand, there is no difference in the look of all the fonts, including the music fonts. As someone else pointed out, the program itself (Finale or Sibelius) generates the data it needs to get the image on the screen, and then that is sent to the OS or to the Postscript interpreting program. Apparently Finale is using a particular routine (possibly subcontracted from a third party?) to generate its Compile Postscript Listing but when the program is set to print to a PDF printer such as Distiller or PDF995 or some other pdf creation program, the image data from Finale is interpreted by a different routine. The difference between Sibelius and Finale when turned into PDFs may simply be the different approach each program takes to generating the lines to show onscreen. Those differing approaches to generating the original data may explain the differing results when printing to PDF files. So I guess one could claim that the fault may lie with Finale, when the same PDF program is used to print to pdf from Sibelius and from Finale and the on-screen results are different. But the fact that some people are seeing great onscreen pdf files from Finale while others aren't says to me that the problem lies in the different approaches to PDF creation that the different 3rd-party pdf creation applications take. And that isn't Finale's fault. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 24.09.2007 Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: As I say, the only thing Finale's Compile Postscript Listing doesn't do is compile the TIFF graphics with it. Have you tried using EPS graphics instead? Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 23.09.2007 Kurt Gnos wrote: I am on Windows XP using acrobat pro 7 and I have no PDF problems whatsoever. You can't blame the PDF output - the problem seems to be the Preview program on Mac. No, now we really are getting confused here. The screen display of Windows produced Finale PDFs is just fine in Preview. It is awful in Reader 8, and I was under the impression the same was true for the Windows version of Reader. Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 23.09.2007 Kurt Gnos wrote: I have no problems with Finale and PDF on Windows. I use Acrobat pro 7 and sometimes do 30 PDFs a day. They are crisp and clean. Don't blame Finale - check your program and settings. You mean in printout or on screen? I don't think there ever was a problem in printout, ony the screen display. Can you post an example to a website? Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
Kurt Gnos wrote: [snip] I wish our list could be strong enough to DEMAND this. [snip] The demands/requests are there -- what is needed is for MakeMusic to respond in a manner which shows that they care about their installed customer base, instead of using Finale-generated income to support their SmartMusic development. And the other aspect which is required is for Sibelius to be willing to open its file format, something it has never felt the need to do. And now that it's safely within the Avid corporate fold, they most likely will never feel that they have to. And I'm sure the cross-grade sales for users of Finale is supporting their opinion in this matter. It would be very interesting to see the amount of cross-grade sales of Sibelius for Finale-users and compare that with cross-grade sales of Finale for Sibelius users. My bet would be that there is a larger flow from Finale to Sibelius than the other way around. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
Ok, the stafflines are displaying better in low resolution. Since I need PDFs for printing, I don't mind much. And when I want to look a PDFs, I use high resolution (1920x1200), and that's fine - say, compared with the quality of tons of scanned PDFs I have... But here is a simple solution. If the staff lines are troubling you - just go to document options - Lines and curves - and set the line thickness of staff lines to a lower value - I used 0.003 in my sample PDF that you can get from: http://mypage.bluewin.ch/kgnos/thickness.pdf If you need other things fixed for PDF screen display, just so it (e. g. beams) - but remember, this will also affect printing. Kurt -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von dc Gesendet: Sonntag, 23. September 2007 11:10 An: finale@shsu.edu; finale@shsu.edu Betreff: Re: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale Kim Patrick Clow écrit: I posted 3 new files... GWV529-Finale.pdf is a PDF of the Finale file. GWV529-Sibelius.pdf is a PDF of the Sibelius first reading of the XML generated by Finale. GWV529-Sibelius-cleaned-up.pdf is a PDF of the file after it was cleaned up in Sibelius. Thanks. If anyone has trouble seeing the difference in quality in the PDFs on screen, and in particular in the staff lines, I'm afraid it's an eye problem! Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 23.09.2007 Kurt Gnos wrote: But here is a simple solution. If the staff lines are troubling you - just go to document options - Lines and curves - and set the line thickness of staff lines to a lower value - I used 0.003 in my sample PDF that you can get from: http://mypage.bluewin.ch/kgnos/thickness.pdf If you need other things fixed for PDF screen display, just so it (e. g. beams) - but remember, this will also affect printing. Exactly. I don't think anyone wants to compromise the printing aspect for better screen display. You may not be bothered by the problem, but it is still a big problem for some, and it is not as it should be. Just one other area where a small bug is causing big headaches, and MakeMusic could probably easily fix it. Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On Sep 23, 2007, at 4:41 AM, Johannes Gebauer wrote: On 23.09.2007 Kurt Gnos wrote: I am on Windows XP using acrobat pro 7 and I have no PDF problems whatsoever. You can't blame the PDF output - the problem seems to be the Preview program on Mac. No, now we really are getting confused here. The screen display of Windows produced Finale PDFs is just fine in Preview. It is awful in Reader 8, and I was under the impression the same was true for the Windows version of Reader. Not on my system. Preview makes all the line grey onscreen, but only from SOME Windows-produced PDFs (Mac ones look fine), but Reader 8 looks great. All PDFs print fine, though. Just on my system, it looks like, though! Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On Sep 23, 2007, at 8:11 AM, dc wrote: dhbailey écrit: My bet would be that there is a larger flow from Finale to Sibelius than the other way around. Of course! MM is doing its best to send its users to Sibelius... I know many people who have made the switch from F to S, and none who have done the opposite. Oh, I know a few. Mostly they cite the many adjustable facets of Finale as the reason. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
Christopher Smith wrote: On Sep 23, 2007, at 4:41 AM, Johannes Gebauer wrote: On 23.09.2007 Kurt Gnos wrote: I am on Windows XP using acrobat pro 7 and I have no PDF problems whatsoever. You can't blame the PDF output - the problem seems to be the Preview program on Mac. No, now we really are getting confused here. The screen display of Windows produced Finale PDFs is just fine in Preview. It is awful in Reader 8, and I was under the impression the same was true for the Windows version of Reader. Not on my system. Preview makes all the line grey onscreen, but only from SOME Windows-produced PDFs (Mac ones look fine), but Reader 8 looks great. All PDFs print fine, though. Just on my system, it looks like, though! Christopher This may serve to show that the problem A) isn't really a MakeMusic problem or B) is totally unsolvable, since it isn't even reproduceable on two different computer systems. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
At 8:03 AM -0400 9/23/07, dhbailey wrote: It would be very interesting to see the amount of cross-grade sales of Sibelius for Finale-users and compare that with cross-grade sales of Finale for Sibelius users. My bet would be that there is a larger flow from Finale to Sibelius than the other way around. This is simply a parenthetical comment, not a call for discussion. One of the lists I'm on is the 18th Century Interdisciplinary Discussion List--mostly frighteningly literate and knowledgeable English professors, some of whom know more about 18th century music than I do. A recent question came up from someone who needs to transcribe an example of 18th century music (I suspect maybe a broadside) and get it into a Word document. (This person does not read music at all, and is working with a high school choir director who has Finale.) In the course of the discussion, Noteworthy Composer was brought up. I thought it had disappeared, but there's an active website and development seems to be ongoing. Version 1.0 had very serious limitations, but whoever is doing the development seems to be working away at it, and at $39 for a licensed version it's dirt cheap for someone who doesn't need a lot of power. (Plus there's a free player that can be downloaded and distributed to, e.g., one's church choir.) The major limitation remains that it is a Windows-only program. Reported without comment. John -- John R. Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On Sep 23, 2007, at 1:20 PM, dhbailey wrote: Christopher Smith wrote: On Sep 23, 2007, at 4:41 AM, Johannes Gebauer wrote: On 23.09.2007 Kurt Gnos wrote: I am on Windows XP using acrobat pro 7 and I have no PDF problems whatsoever. You can't blame the PDF output - the problem seems to be the Preview program on Mac. No, now we really are getting confused here. The screen display of Windows produced Finale PDFs is just fine in Preview. It is awful in Reader 8, and I was under the impression the same was true for the Windows version of Reader. Not on my system. Preview makes all the line grey onscreen, but only from SOME Windows-produced PDFs (Mac ones look fine), but Reader 8 looks great. All PDFs print fine, though. Just on my system, it looks like, though! Christopher This may serve to show that the problem A) isn't really a MakeMusic problem or B) is totally unsolvable, since it isn't even reproduceable on two different computer systems. I'm not convinced of either of those conclusions, though I concede that A) is a distinct possibility. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
Since PDFs are basically postscript, and Finale's display, I guess, is also a kind of postscript, this should be solved easily. Finale's superior fine tuning possibilities (like the possibility to adjust the thickness of staff lines) has its ups, on the other hand drawing the lines as hairlines would solve the PDF displaying badly on screens. Defaults - Sibelius has much better defaults for formatting and display, I guess. And that is what people want. It is nice that in Finale we are able to fine-tune everything - BUT this should not be necessary as often... Kurt -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von Johannes Gebauer Gesendet: Sonntag, 23. September 2007 17:23 An: finale@shsu.edu Betreff: Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale On 23.09.2007 Kurt Gnos wrote: But here is a simple solution. If the staff lines are troubling you - just go to document options - Lines and curves - and set the line thickness of staff lines to a lower value - I used 0.003 in my sample PDF that you can get from: http://mypage.bluewin.ch/kgnos/thickness.pdf If you need other things fixed for PDF screen display, just so it (e. g. beams) - but remember, this will also affect printing. Exactly. I don't think anyone wants to compromise the printing aspect for better screen display. You may not be bothered by the problem, but it is still a big problem for some, and it is not as it should be. Just one other area where a small bug is causing big headaches, and MakeMusic could probably easily fix it. Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
Since PDFs are basically postscript, and Finale's display, I guess, is also a kind of postscript, this should be solved easily. This does not address the fact that Finale's Compile Postscript Listing function produces a perfect display. Finale prints to Postscript and compiles Postscript quite differently. Just look at the Postscript listings themselves. They're different almost immediately -- and it doesn't matter which Postscript driver is used. I've been through dozens because I have many installed for different print jobs. I also have Distiller, Ghostscript and docPrint Pro. The same results occur with those -- great results from Compile Postscript Listing and terrible from printing to Postscript. The example you posted looks like the quality display produced by Compile Postscript Listing rather than print-to-Postscript. What was your printing sequence from Finale? And what printer driver were you printing to? Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
PS to previous: The reason this is very important for me is that Compile Postscript Listing does *not* include embedded graphics. For many scores, I need them, and have had to fall back on printing to Postscript and its poor results. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 23.09.2007 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The example you posted looks like the quality display produced by Compile Postscript Listing rather than print-to-Postscript. What was your printing sequence from Finale? And what printer driver were you printing to? No, he just used very thin lines. If you print this example it will look pretty awful, at least to my eyes. If you look at the example at high magnification you will still see that the lines don't anti-alias, and display slightly different thicknesses. Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 23.09.2007 Christopher Smith wrote: Not on my system. Preview makes all the line grey onscreen, but only from SOME Windows-produced PDFs (Mac ones look fine), but Reader 8 looks great. But the lines should be grey. They are thinner than one pixel, so the anti-aliasing should make it grey. The problem with the windows PDF output displayed in Reader is that all the lines are different thickness, extremely thick, and the notes are so blotchy one can't read them. Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
Johannes wrote: No, he just used very thin lines. If you print this example it will look pretty awful, at least to my eyes. If you look at the example at high magnification you will still see that the lines don't anti-alias, and display slightly different thicknesses. The lines are very thin, but showing identical thicknesses here. I enlarged to 6400% on Acrobat Reader 8 with no issues. And the curves (which are normally disasters in print-to-Postscript displays) also show as curves, not at all jagged. The beams are not showing up as multiple lines at any magnification, which is a characteristic of print-to-Postscript under Windows. And the file size is very small. Now if I can see one of these with embedded graphics :) Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
AW: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
I just used the Acrobat 7 printer driver. No compile postscript - You see why I'm quite happy with Finale's PDF output now...;-) BUT I adjusted the staff line width in Finale. In fact, I have wonderful output from any program whatsoever. In Quark Xpress, you can also save as postscript - I get better results just using the Acrobat (professional) output in Windows XP. No complaints whatsoever. Kurt -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gesendet: Sonntag, 23. September 2007 21:47 An: finale@shsu.edu Betreff: Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale Since PDFs are basically postscript, and Finale's display, I guess, is also a kind of postscript, this should be solved easily. This does not address the fact that Finale's Compile Postscript Listing function produces a perfect display. Finale prints to Postscript and compiles Postscript quite differently. Just look at the Postscript listings themselves. They're different almost immediately -- and it doesn't matter which Postscript driver is used. I've been through dozens because I have many installed for different print jobs. I also have Distiller, Ghostscript and docPrint Pro. The same results occur with those -- great results from Compile Postscript Listing and terrible from printing to Postscript. The example you posted looks like the quality display produced by Compile Postscript Listing rather than print-to-Postscript. What was your printing sequence from Finale? And what printer driver were you printing to? Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
AW: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
Dennis, I used to use EPS a lot, and since Finale couldn't get them working for a decade or so, I switched to Tiffs. Pity, since I like EPS and the possibility to enlarge or shrink the EPS at will without losing quality. I never had any problems with PDFs, though, and sometimes I use them as a workaround for the erratic EPS functionality. But I certainly have not used compile postscript listing for years. There ARE borders between usability and just fiddling around, praying and hoping. Maybe getting Acrobat Pro 7 or 8 might solve your issues... Kurt -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gesendet: Sonntag, 23. September 2007 22:05 An: finale@shsu.edu Betreff: Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale PS to previous: The reason this is very important for me is that Compile Postscript Listing does *not* include embedded graphics. For many scores, I need them, and have had to fall back on printing to Postscript and its poor results. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
AW: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
Dennis, you can send me a Finale File using embedded Graphics, and I will print it using Acrobat 7 Pro in XP and upload the output. Kurt -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gesendet: Sonntag, 23. September 2007 22:22 An: finale@shsu.edu Betreff: Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale Johannes wrote: No, he just used very thin lines. If you print this example it will look pretty awful, at least to my eyes. If you look at the example at high magnification you will still see that the lines don't anti-alias, and display slightly different thicknesses. The lines are very thin, but showing identical thicknesses here. I enlarged to 6400% on Acrobat Reader 8 with no issues. And the curves (which are normally disasters in print-to-Postscript displays) also show as curves, not at all jagged. The beams are not showing up as multiple lines at any magnification, which is a characteristic of print-to-Postscript under Windows. And the file size is very small. Now if I can see one of these with embedded graphics :) Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
you can send me a Finale File using embedded Graphics, and I will print it using Acrobat 7 Pro in XP and upload the output. Kurt, Most of my files are 20-100MB with their embedded graphics -- a tad too large to send. But I am trying another set of new drivers, and other than the staff lines, they're not so bad. But the pscript5.dll version you're using doesn't work here. Many thanks, Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 23 Sep 2007 at 21:37, Kurt Gnos wrote: Since PDFs are basically postscript, and Finale's display, I guess, is also a kind of postscript, Huh? How does Finale on Windows utilize PS onscreen? The fact is, it doesn't. For that matter, on Mac, display PS *is* used for rendering, but at the OS level, not in Finale itself. Finale takes its data file, translates it into what it wants painted onscreen, then hands that off to the OS, which then renders it using display PS. On Windows, of course, no PS is involved in the display at all (except maybe the fonts). this should be solved easily. It's the same issue we've been discussion with the XML converter -- Finale converts its data file to its internal represention of what should appear onscreen and then hands it off to the OS to render. That means there's a conversion/translation operation, so that's where problems can creep in. Finale is drawing the lines onscreen in a way that Acrobat Reader doesn't render well. To me, the problem is with Acrobat, not with Finale, though the ubiquity of Acrobat should give Finale's developers pause in rendering their lines as multiple lines, instead of in the more usual vector-based approach (i.e., describe the line by its width and thickness, rather than drawing multiple skinny lines to get a thick line). -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 23 Sep 2007 at 15:46, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Since PDFs are basically postscript, and Finale's display, I guess, is also a kind of postscript, this should be solved easily. This does not address the fact that Finale's Compile Postscript Listing function produces a perfect display. Finale prints to Postscript and compiles Postscript quite differently. This is perfectly explainable. On Windows, there is the native graphics/printing subsystem, which has zilch to do with PostScript. On Windows, Finale outputs using the Windows graphics/printing subsystem's primitives, which are then translated by a specific printer driver into that printer's output language. So, on Windows when printing to a PDF driver, Finale is sending *Windows* commands that are then translated by the driver into PostScript. When you compile a PS listing, Finale is doing the conversion, rather than letting the PDF driver do it, and Finale probably sends different commands to its internal PS interpreter than it would send to the Windows universal print driver. On Mac, there is no issue of this kind, as the Mac universal print driver is built on top of PostScript in the first place, so the same Finale primitive output could drive both compiling to PS and printing to a PDF driver. But, again, the problem as I see it is *not* with Finale, but with Acrobat's incorrect line smoothing. I don't know why Finale sends multiple thin lines instead of a single line with a particular thickness to the print driver, but perhaps there's a reason for that. I fear, though, that the reason is that this is a holdover from pre- TrueType days (i.e., circa Finale 2.01). I can't imagine that any modern printer or display could not properly render a line that was defined as a single line with a thickness instead of as a bunch of thing lines bunched together to make a thick line. But I don't know the details. Perhaps it's much more complicated than it looks and that's why MM has not changed the way Finale on Windows outputs lines to the universal printer driver. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 23 Sep 2007 at 22:02, Johannes Gebauer wrote: The problem with the windows PDF output displayed in Reader is that all the lines are different thickness, extremely thick, and the notes are so blotchy one can't read them. Well, that's a horse of a different color. On every PC I've ever viewed my own PDFs (with Acrobat Reader), *some* of the lines are of varying thicknesses, and usually just two different thicknesses (1 pixel or 2), and the notes themselves are just fine and dandy. I do note that increasing the magnification from 100% to 200% to 300% to 400% causes different lines to be thicker/thinner, but still, there's just two line thicknesses (1 pixel or 2). But, again, I cite Acrobat Reader 6, which was able to smooth these lines so that the thicknesses did not vary, and did not do it with anti-aliasing that resulted in gray lines. But I've *never* seen blurry noteheads (I have seen a few blurry beams, but mostly when the angle was very shallow and the anti- aliasing had to be spread over a number of horizontal pixels). There could also be differences on Windows machines depending on whether you're using Windows anti-aliasing or the newer ClearType (which is designed specifically for LCD screens and shouldn't be used with CRTs). While ClearType has major flaws (see http://antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.html for a detailed look at the problem), it works quite well for getting onscreen clarity. But Acrobat Reader perhaps uses internal methods for this, and maybe this is why things look bad on Windows (the basic difference between Apple anti-aliasing and MS anti-aliasing is whether you respect the font shape/widths or respect the screen grid; if you do the former, you get blurry text that is properly proportioned at all sizes and on all devices; if you do the latter, the proportions change according to the size, because you're adjusting the glyph shape to the pixel grid) -- because Windows users are used to seeing a different kind of anti-aliasing, or because the two kinds of anti-aliasing cause conflicts. Of course, I don't have a problem with Acrobat Reader's rendering of anything but lines, so I'm not sure where the fuzzy notes are coming from. I've simply never seen it. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 23 Sep 2007 at 22:09, Johannes Gebauer wrote: On 23.09.2007 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The example you posted looks like the quality display produced by Compile Postscript Listing rather than print-to-Postscript. What was your printing sequence from Finale? And what printer driver were you printing to? No, he just used very thin lines. If you print this example it will look pretty awful, at least to my eyes. If you look at the example at high magnification you will still see that the lines don't anti-alias, and display slightly different thicknesses. Huh? Viewed in what software? When I look at the example at 100% and 2400% (or any other magnification I choose) in Acrobat Reader 8 none of the staff lines are aliased. NONE. True, it will not print well, but if you're producing your PDF for online use, this seems like a good solution to me. It also discourages people from printing it and using it. But no, it's not a good solution for PDFs that are intended to be printed. Of course, this just shows the inherent conflict at the heart of all PDFs: The requirements of onscreen and printed output are often in severe conflict with each other. I have always felt that PDF works much better for printed output than for onscreen display (fonts for print are usually too small in relation to page size for ease of use on a screen, unless you have one of those portrait-mode monitors). This is the same problem I always had with the Sibelius page display for editing (which has been eliminated as a problem in Sib5), that what I needed to see all at once was the whole page, or just the part I was editing, and moving from system to system caused it to jump around. And viewing a full page at a time everything was too small. Anyway, I'm just blathering now, so I'll stop! :) -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On Sep 23, 2007, at 4:02 PM, Johannes Gebauer wrote: On 23.09.2007 Christopher Smith wrote: Not on my system. Preview makes all the line grey onscreen, but only from SOME Windows-produced PDFs (Mac ones look fine), but Reader 8 looks great. But the lines should be grey. They are thinner than one pixel, so the anti-aliasing should make it grey. Nah. The beams are grey, too, and everything is still grey at high magnifications. Also some very thin lines are completely black, so that can't be it. Also Mac-produced PDFs never have grey anything. The problem with the windows PDF output displayed in Reader is that all the lines are different thickness, extremely thick, and the notes are so blotchy one can't read them. Hmm, not my experience. Do you have Reader 8, the newest one? David Bailey pointed out that it is hard to make an accurate diagnosis when the results are so different on different systems. It certainly isn't helping! Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: AW: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
Dennis, Try yousendit.com for large files. They allow files to be sent up to 100mb when you register. I find it very useful. Christopher On Sep 23, 2007, at 5:25 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: you can send me a Finale File using embedded Graphics, and I will print it using Acrobat 7 Pro in XP and upload the output. Kurt, Most of my files are 20-100MB with their embedded graphics -- a tad too large to send. But I am trying another set of new drivers, and other than the staff lines, they're not so bad. But the pscript5.dll version you're using doesn't work here. Many thanks, Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
I am on Windows XP using acrobat pro 7 and I have no PDF problems whatsoever. You can't blame the PDF output - the problem seems to be the Preview program on Mac. At least you ask the question yourself - Another issue for PDF on screen (actually, I just need it for printing most of the time, and I'm glad the quality is very good, even using small file sizes) - The better the resolution, the better the quality. I use a HP 24 screen displaying 1920 x 1200 dots. So maybe this is part of my answer. Kurt The Finale PDF is apparently a Windows-produced PDF, and it shows up with grey lines (instead of black) when viewed onscreen using Preview (the Mac catch-all viewing program). This seems to be the case with most Windows PDFs I see. However, when I view it using Acrobat Reader, everything is thick and black and exactly in the right places, as far as I can tell. Furthermore, it prints correctly even from Preview. Could this be simply a Preview issue? How does the Finale PDF look to a Windows user? The Sibelius PDF looks fine in Preview AND in Adobe. Was it produced using a third-party distiller like Acrobat, or some other means? Was it made using a different method than the Finale PDF, is what I am asking? ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
I have no problems with Finale and PDF on Windows. I use Acrobat pro 7 and sometimes do 30 PDFs a day. They are crisp and clean. Don't blame Finale - check your program and settings. Kurt -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gesendet: Samstag, 22. September 2007 15:12 An: finale@shsu.edu Betreff: Re: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale Kim Patrick Clow écrit: Why, oh why, can't Finale produce decent looking PDF files? Windows? It does if you Compile Postscript Listing. Whatever method they use to print to Postscript is flawed, but the compilation is great. Here's an example from two weeks ago. It has flaws, but they're mine. :) http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/music/waam/low-clouds-evening- wind.pdf Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
God I'm glad I started this thread. Really - how about MakeMusic and Sibelius sitting down and discussing their future. I mean, they share most of the professional (and many less professional, no qualification intended) users wanting to notate musical scores. Thinking about some file compatibility might help the daily work of both Sibelius and Finale users. In fact that would be the one point where both programs could profit both in quality and popularity. Everything else, alas, is competition and pushing features - a war we all know from cars to TVs to cell phones to microwaves to software to operating systems to ourselves... Competition is a concept that works fine for evolution - but when it comes to quality and specification, it does not always work. Imagine this fox with the antlers and the new cool wasp sting in the newest and hottest porcupine version - Does he really need it? Do we need it? What do we need? A means to an end - A version of Finale that works reliably, giving us the best results with only basic inputs, which is open to to be opened by similar software on any operating system. Minimal input, maximum quality output, be it PDF, Sibelius, printing, Midi... I wish our list could be strong enough to DEMAND this. Kurt -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag von David W. Fenton Gesendet: Samstag, 22. September 2007 23:41 An: finale@shsu.edu Betreff: Re: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale On 22 Sep 2007 at 4:26, dhbailey wrote: The only way that files will ever be truly convertible with complete perfection and complete transparency in the process will be when the two companies sit down and agree on a file format that both will use. We know that will never happen. That's not a true statement (the first one, not the second one) -- there are plenty of file formats for which there is perfect conversion between them. True, most of them convey data that is not as complicated as music notation, but, nonetheless, it is possible. The key is that the converter has to understand the native methods for each part of the conversion. If Sibelius has a native figured bass capability, then the converter needs to take Finale figured bass and convert it to that. The problem with Finale is that there are multiple ways to implement figured bass (expressions, articulations, lyrics, chords), and there's no way an converter could figure out which is the right way. That is, you'd have to tell the converter the lyrics in verse 4 are figured bass, so encode them accordingly. As long as the same things are supported on both sides, then it should convert. Kim's example of + trills is a good one. A really great converter would ask what does that mean? and then convert it accordingly. Of course, I don't see why Sibelius can't just use a custom articulation (whatever they call it), but apparently that's not the way Sibelius works (?). The key thing is that *Finale* doesn't know what the + trill means, so there's really no way for a converter to know. Sibelius is more restrictive in how it handles text and articulations, and because of that, it's easier for a converter to know what to do with it. But it's all theoretically possible, though David B. is probably correct that perfect conversion is probably a goal that will never be reached. But all that's needed is about 99% (anything less than that is an awful lot of work), not 100%. It could easily take 99% of the work on a converter to get that last 100%, and that means it's probably never going to happen (unless some crazy person starts working on the converter!). -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
On 23 Sep 2007 at 2:34, Kurt Gnos wrote: Really - how about MakeMusic and Sibelius sitting down and discussing their future. I mean, they share most of the professional (and many less professional, no qualification intended) users wanting to notate musical scores. Well, companies usually don't work that way, unless one of them is the underdog and trying to steal the other's market. An example is Excel and Lotus 123: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog52.html The argument there is that the perfect conversion between Excel and 123 and the 123 macro compatibility in Excel made it possible for 123 users to try Excel without being locked into it -- they could always go back to 123 because their Excel files could be converted. But that's a case of underdog Microsoft (remember, this was c. 1990 and earlier, when MS was not the monolithic power it is today) wanting to steal the top dog's market. In music notation, it seems to me that Sibelius has already accomplished the bulk of this, simply by making an easier-to-learn (but not necessarily easier-to-use) user interface. I don't see what they'd have to gain by engaging MakeMusic in discussions to make their files interoperable -- all the benefit seems to me to flow to the Finale side of things. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: AW: [Finale] Converting from Sibelius to Finale
Kurt Gnos wrote, on 9/22/2007 8:04 PM: I have no problems with Finale and PDF on Windows. I use Acrobat pro 7 and sometimes do 30 PDFs a day. They are crisp and clean. Don't blame Finale - check your program and settings. Can you post a PDF example on your website? One that is *printed* from Finale to Postscript and then distilled with Acrobat -- not one produced from a compiled Postscript listing (which worked from Finale 2.2 through Finale 97 and from Finale 2006 onward). Finale's paper printing is fine, but screen display is ugly. I have never seen a PC-produced Finale printed to Postscript that looked good. And using the same combinations and drivers, every other program creates a fine screen display when printed to Postscript. Finale is the one exception -- and it also produces huge files (five to 20 times larger than compiled Postscript then converted to PDF). Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
