Access of Meta Tags for a Cover

• Jan 24, 2015 - 14:32

Just a question

Meta tags work already fine for header/footer.
In File-Info I find (or can complete) all the specifications needed to design a cover.
--> How can I use this meta tags to design a cover page?


Comments

In reply to by Zynette

Generally speaking, it looks like a good idea.

However, it is difficult to imagine it could go beyond something very simple and very generic and then likely not being enough (or not appropriate) for most cases.

Covers are among the most variable parts of a book and it is rather common for a score -- as for any other book -- to have some front matter between the cover and the beginning of the music itself (colophon, table of contents, preface, introduction, critical notes, etc.). MuseScore is not (and it is not intended to be nor should, in my opinion, become) a word processing software, even less a typographic composition software.

Therefore, I see the risk of spending time and resources to discuss the characteristics of such a cover feature, to implement it, test it, etc. to arrive at something not really useful in most cases. IMHO, something with a very low priority...

I occasionally used as a cover an initial page occupied by a vertical frame with some textual elements; if I remember correctly, this happened only twice in all my MuseScore scores since ever, for separate parts bulky enough to deserve a front page. But in the great majority of the cases, it was much simpler, quicker and more flexible to create the front matters (cover included) in a separate program, export to PDF and glue it to the front of the score PDF with some appropriate utility. The bulk of this process can easily be automated with suitable shell scripts and, after designing the first two or three from scratch, one usually can re-use them as templates for the others.

Thanks,

M.

In reply to by Miwarre

Much as I like the idea in some ways, I do agree with Miwarre here - MuseScore is never likely to be a general purpose graphic design package, so any work that went into special cover-design facilities would likely still fall short and hence be somewhat wasted. It's possible that some sort of compromise could be reached where a "small" amount of effort yielded something useful a "significant" enough amount of the time to seem worth it. But I suspect any such balance would probably be further toward the less ambitious side.

In reply to by Miwarre

Rethinking of it, in my experience the first page was just an extantcion of the title frame that fit the first page, and had jjust the same information : Title, composer, (arranger) , part and sometimes copyright

So that may be a solution extend the title frame and moving text element to their places...

In reply to by Zynette

At least on score creation some of the texts in the top vertical frame and some of the meta tags get filled with the same values: Title, Composer, Lyricist, on part creation add partName.
After that they unfortunately get disconnected, so changes to one are not reflected in the other

I am impressed as I could not imagine what consequences follow on my proposal.

Considered realistic - the benefit for MuseScore is disputable and therefore
it seems much easier to complete a cover - if needed - with common tools.
Thank you all for the detailed discussion.

Greetings - Rudi

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