MIXING TEXT AND SCORES, how to???

• May 7, 2012 - 21:37

I am creating workbooks for my piano students, a large mix of one or two systems, then text, sometimes full page of a score, then text, etc.

There doesn't seem to be any good way to do this.

I tried creating my scores in musescore, then adding vertical frames to insert instructional text. When I start using vertical frames and inserting text the program freezes and fritzes and I have to shut down and start over again. Not to mention it's very cumbersome, not conduciive to large amounts of text. This option doesnt' seem to be a remote possibility.

SO, I've been creating text in LibreOffice, scores in Muse Score. Converting the scores to PDF, then using GIMP to cut and paste lines of score amongst text in LibreOffice Writer. Very slick. EXCEPT ONE HUGE DRAWBACK -- GIMP creates very fuzzy looking systems - notes and lines blurred. Not acceptable.

I looked at other PDF editors to use besides GIMP. Not finding much. I'm sure there's plenty of you out there doing this kind of thing. How can it be done efficiently and in an aesthetically acceptable manner???

Comments

• May 7, 2012 - 23:11

If you are using a lot of text, then I would be inclined to use the PNG export function from MuseScore (Save As then choose PNG).

You can then import your notation as a graphic into your text document.

This is easier than doing it the other way round, and is the way I produce notation for the congregation in our weekly service sheets - the text is done in Libreoffice Write, and the notation in MuseScore then exported as a PNG

HTH
Michael

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• May 8, 2012 - 00:57

Thank you for your help. I did save it as a png file--- but this is where I get stuck.

In these workbooks, each page is mainly text, with a sample of one line of score interspersed within the text. When I save the musescore file as a png with just one line of score, I end up with just that one line on a full blank page, then when I import the png to the word doc, my graphic is a full blank page with one line of score at the top of the page. I need to be able to crop that line of score out of the full page so I don't end up with all of the white space around it, taking up too much room in the word doc.

Tried to manipulate the graphic once in the word doc, but that is not very doable at all.

Hope this all makes sense, please respond if you have any answers to my quandary. Thanks!

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• May 8, 2012 - 01:27

Think I've got it now, I reduced page size and margins in MuseScore, now it seems I can import graphics reasonably with no white space surrounding each line of score. And I compared the PNG verses the GIMP score, much more clear. This was a big help, thanks so much.

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• May 8, 2012 - 01:30

First go to Edit->Preferences->Export and ensure that PNG screenshot function is unchecked. Save the whole file as a PNG and delete the MSCZ bit in the filename box.

Open the PNG in GIMP*. Use the rectangular selection tool to copy the desired line. Paste it into LibreOffice. (I tried this using OpenOffice but I'm assuming that LibreOffice handles pasting images in a similar manner).

The advantage of this is that you can crop several lines from the one PNG file.

*If the image in GIMP appears greyed out when you open the PNG file then select Image->Flatten Image.

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• May 8, 2012 - 01:37

Thanks for the input -- I'm actually trying to avoid GIMP - I was doing almost exactly as you instructed, tho saving it as a PDF, rather than PNG, then using GIMP to crop and copy the desired lines of score. The problem is that GIMP produces a somewhat fuzzy image - some notes are blurred, some staff lines are blurred. So unless going from a PNG file to GIMP vs. PDF file to GIMP improves this problem, I am going to stay away from GIMP altogether.

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• May 8, 2012 - 02:27

I don't know how much of a techie you are. When I tried to download Greenshot I got this error message:

Archive: /tmp/Greenshot-INSTALLER-0.8.0-0627.exe
[/tmp/Greenshot-INSTALLER-0.8.0-0627.exe]
End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not
a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the
latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
the last disk(s) of this archive.
zipinfo: cannot find zipfile directory in one of /tmp/Greenshot-INSTALLER-0.8.0-0627.exe or
/tmp/Greenshot-INSTALLER-0.8.0-0627.exe.zip, and cannot find /tmp/Greenshot-INSTALLER-0.8.0-0627.exe.ZIP, period.

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• May 8, 2012 - 02:46

No need to use GIMP or play with margins. Just install the "Snippet Creator" plugin from the repository (see Plugins in the menu at right of this page). It does the cropping for you. Really nice.

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• May 8, 2012 - 03:08

I did actually download and try Snippet Creator for awhile. Also delivers fuzzy images (I'm a little picky about this - some may think it's acceptable, but not for my purposes)-- also causes MuseScore to crash on my computer, as well. Had to continually shut down and reopen.

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• May 8, 2012 - 04:04

Fuzzy in what way? Should be standard issue losslessly compressed PNG files. Might be only 72dpi, though, and thus better for display than print. I believe in 2.0 you'll be able to control the resultion of PNG output?

As for crashes, I've never seen any. If you had a reproducible example, submtting an issue would be very useful.

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• May 8, 2012 - 04:11

noteheads slightly blurred, as well as staff lines. This was only evident upon printing. As I said, I'm maybe overly sensitive to that - I want to publish a professional looking product.

SC also caused the MuseScore to crash nearly every time I used it. I actually had a little dialogue with the creator of SnippetCreator, he said it's intended use was for a few measures of music -- mine were one, two, sometimes four or five lines. That may be why it crashed.

I

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• May 8, 2012 - 04:19

Looks like the resolution of the PNG file created by Snippet Creator is 100dpi, set explicitly in the curScore.save line. All you'd have to do is change that to 300 (make the change in any text editor) and you should have high enough resolution to not look "fuzzy" in prints. I've used it many times for examples of up to a full page and never had it crash, so lengths can't be the problem. Could have been something specific to your system configuration at the time and worth another shot now. Definitely much, MIUCH easier than any of the other methods being discussed, and if you get the resolution right, quality should be every bit as good as any of the more difficult methods.

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• May 8, 2012 - 05:39

Gee you should charge, your advice, I think, will prove invaluable.

Since you seems to be very knowledgeable in all things computer related, here is a question for you.:

My workbook is already completed, I had the printers run a prototype and discovered then how blurred the scores were --

Going forward I am going to get the Snippet Creator up and running per your advice, but for this particular project --

the music scores are PDFs that were cropped and pasted into a word doc with GIMP. It was in the GIMP program that I lost resolution. Is there anyway to correct that without starting over?

I loved your Pathetique interpretation. Creative and Energetic. Jazz/Classical fusion is good stuff.

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• May 8, 2012 - 09:33

I think the simplest solution is to use MuseScore's page size settings.

Once you start putting images through other software it can lead to a degradation in resolution as you have experienced with Gimp.

I start by setting the page size to A5 which is the format used for service sheets, then once I have finished tidying up the part I set the left and right margins to be the same as the service sheet and top and bottom to 0. Finally I reduce the page height until the bottom stave shifts to another page then back it up one,

This gives me a pretty well cropped PNG to insert into LibrePffice Write where I can finetune any further cropping necessary from the Picture Dialogue.

HTH
Michael

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• May 9, 2012 - 18:12

this option and the snippet creator option seem to be my best alternatives (tho snippet creator won't work the way my computer is currently configured; I'll have to uninstall and reinstall and try again) For now, until I can get Snippet Creator to perform the way M. Sabatella is able to use it, I will use your method. Thanks for the input.

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• May 8, 2012 - 14:55

The problem with PDF is that it isn't really a graphic format per se. It has to be converted to a graphic format for display or editing, which may lose information, and then if you attempt to save as PDF from that graphic format, you may lose information again. GIMP is perfecty capable of editing graphic format without losing information, but only if the format itslef is conducive to that sort of editing, and PDF is not. If you edited a PNG with GIMP, you would not lose any information unless you deliberately changed resolution. And PNG uses a lossless compression scheme, so no information is lost that way, either.

Creating a special document with margins just the right size for each individual example certainly works too and could have advantages if you need the graphic to contain a border/margin around the actual notation. It's just more work than the plugin to have to adjust this example by example. If all your examples are similar - eg,one line, chord symbols but no lyrics - then you can at least share one set of page settings for all similar examples, which does help.

Personally, as I have related elsewhere, I am not using MuseScore for creating these examples myself, just because the whole process of creating and sizing graphic files, importing those graphic files into my word processor, and then managing all those files and keeping track of which file corresponds to which example should I wish to edit the examples later (which is pretty common) is for work than I prefer. Not because of any limitation in MuseScore - it was the same when I used Finale. At one time, didn't Windows have something called "Ole" that was designed to make it easier to embed objects from one application into another and retain information allowing you to easily edit those objects?

Anyhow, instead, I now use the ABC music language to create my examples as text directly within my word processing document, and then I have a set of macros that go through and convert these to notation using abcm2ps, which is a *very* good typesetting program. At some point, I hope to try to turn this utility into something that would be usable by someone other than me.

BTW, thanks for the comments on my jazz version of Pathetique!

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• May 9, 2012 - 00:12

VERY informative, thank you. Wish I knew more about the nuts and bolts of programming - I can run programs fairly intuitively, not afraid to try anything, but when problems arise I run for cover! (just ask my hubby about that....)

I have never heard of ABC music language, but what you are doing with it sounds so seamless -- however, a steep learning curve, I assume. If you turn this into something us proletariat types can use, let us know!!

Thanks again for so much good information.

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• Jul 15, 2012 - 21:33

May I make a suggestion.

Having had a score converted from So-fa by one of the members of this forum, I wanted to show it in our Church.

To achieve the the mix of and text I used Scribus v 1.4.1, it is a type setting program, and a public domain one at that. The text is very flexible as far as line spacing and fonts.

I am attaching a PDF format copy for you to have a look.

Wena D. Parry

Attachment Size
Doigfen prawf.pdf 188.1 KB

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• Jul 16, 2012 - 22:49

PDF is perfect for displaying graphics! Your graphics are wrong if PDF can't show them nicely. And PNG indeed is wrong for this. Sheet music is vector graphics, PNG is pixel graphics. Vector graphics look smooth no matter how you scale it. Pixel graphics get fuzzy when scaled.
MuseScore can export to SVG graphics. You can use Inkscape to edit and crop the vector graphics, which can further be read into proper text editors, which can output PDF files. Or you can make PDF files with MuseScore and read the PDF files into Inkscape. Or some other editor capable of importing PDF for editing.

Well, this is how it should work. I just tested outputting to a SVG file and reading it into Inkscape. Something got lost on the way, probably due to my old versions. Inkscape file preview shows that the graphic files are ok, but when the file opens in the editor window, it looks corrupt.

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• Jul 17, 2012 - 05:53

PDF is fine for *displaying* graphics. It's justt so hot for *editing* them. That was the point I made earlier. It's not really relevant here, thougn. I think there was some confusion about that, also about some other comments about a problem someone was having with their graphics. But indeed, the quality of the pdf output from MuseScore is great, certainly you aren't going to better exporting as some other format then converting to PDF later.

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• Jul 17, 2012 - 08:57

I guess the best option is Adobe's own PDF editor, if one wants to create PDF files for publishing. The editor can probably open the PDF files exported from MuseScore.
MuseScore outputs great graphics, either as PDF or directly to the printer. My guess is that the inner graphic format in the PDF files is some kind of SVG, and the SVG export in MuseScore should therefore be able to do the same excellent graphics. But I guess MuseScore fails there.

One thing that I sometimes do is exporting sheet music to a huge PNG file, say 3000 by 4000 pixels. Then I read it into Inkscape and convert it into vector graphics. After that it's scalable to any size to be used in any text document.

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• Jul 17, 2012 - 13:05

I have the same experience as jotti.
Became curious about Inkscape for its possibilities and
after downloading and installing the latest version, I created a .svg file with MuseScore.
Opening this file with Inkscape........... what a mess! Noteheads are missing, clefs are missing and
the time signature is shifted way into the staff. What a dissapointment.
Joe.

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• Jul 17, 2012 - 15:53

ChurchOranist,
After reading that discussion and there you wrote that you have no
problems when opening the .svg file in Serif DrawPlus X4.
I have DrawPlus X4 on my pc and after opening a simple one page score,
the result was also a mess. No noteheads but little squares instead (also chords are squares).
Is there a little trick in DrawPlus X4 to overcome that or do I have to go to their Forum?
Joe.

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• Jul 17, 2012 - 20:51

MuseScore has two TrueType fonts embedded in the code which are used for rendering noteheads etc.

Unfortunately SVG export is broken in 1.2, and unless you have these fonts installed in your Fonts folder your vector Graphics software will not be able to render the graphics correctly.

I got hold of them by digging around on SourceForge, but if you need help to get them message me and I'll email them to you.

The two fonts concerned are.......
MScore - filename mscore-20.ttf
MScore1 - filename mscore1-20.ttf

It is not considered advisable to install these in your FOnts folder by the Dev team - I'm not sure why. But I've not been able to discern any ill effects from doing so.

HTH
Michael

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• Jul 18, 2012 - 11:11

Yes, thank you I will share the solution. But it’s more of a work round as far as MuseScore work is involved.
I have been involved in digital printing work for some years.

To get a quality print there is two methods I can use,
First I get a PNG graphic, it must be 300DPI (dots per inch) and MuseScore can do that. I can then put that into my digital type setting program with whatever else that is necessary at the end of the process the program will need to convert it into an CMYK graphics, the whole becomes a PDF. Its now ready for a commercial digital printer to processes into a book.

The other way, if you have some colour work in the a Tif format is expectable by some companies. However, the TIF graphics needs to be 600dpi. That makes the fill bigger. This format is a very good one for a book cover, and that is what I use with a colour one. If you have a printer like the one I use, every megabit has to be transmitted by the internet.

But my favoured system is the format that MuseScore is unable to produce at present. But some one on this thread has already given a very good solution to my work, one that I have used in book already, that is to “Save As” PNG file, it only needs be at 300dpi then open that in Inkscape and save it there as an SVG format.

There are other things that your commercial printer may have been unhappy about such as whether the graphic of the music scour is in RGB or CMYK. You would need to ask your printing company what exactly they want.

I do hope this will help.

If you have further problems let me know, I will attempt to help.

Wena D Parry
South Wales, U.K.

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• Jul 18, 2012 - 12:08

Inkscape seems to read pdf files. But same problem there. While reading the PDF into Inkscape, you get a preview, which looks quite ok, but then when it's opened, every object in the score which originally was rendered with the internal fonts, has been replaced with some "nearest font" or something. You probably have to install the MuseScore internal fonts on your system. After that I guess you can read to Inkscape either PDF or SVG exports from MuseScore.

Inkscape's role here is that you can crop the image as you wish. If you ever get so far that you have the graphics looking good in Inkscape, you probably have to convert everything to patches. That way you can use the cropping tools in Inkscape, which can cut a clef into a half, if that's what you want. As long as it's not converted to paths, most elements are just text snippets that look like music score.

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• Jul 18, 2012 - 13:34

As we cant get a good result by means of the PDF, the best way is by means of a high res png and as we are having a problem in exporting a good SVG from MuseScore we have to go through this other root convert it to get a SVG, my print system dose not do a good job of importing PDF graphics but the end result is wonderful.

Wena

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