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measures per line?

Is there a way to specify how many measures per line in the print parameters?
some lines have 3 some have five, etc.

Re: measures per line?

Reply #1 –
No, Dan, there isn't. This is probably the biggest problem for me when I'm trying to fit things best onto a page, and one that I hope Eric will address soon. It takes some fiddling at the moment. (Hey Eric, how about a "fit to page" option?! ... only kidding!)

I guess one question to ask is "how important is it?", though I know many players who prefer, say, four bars to a line etc.

A

Re: measures per line?

Reply #3 –
This is a wish that may be really hard to realize.
What if you "suddenly" change the size of your paper ??? Especially when reducing it ?? This may be really tricky, or should at least produce a message such as "The number of measures set is too large for such a format", but this would require to check all the staves... Time lost when you just want to print a special edition for one instrument.

IMHO, this automatic decision is more efficient in 95% of configurations. Especially when ou do not know what kind of printing you will produce yet.
Otherwise, the "blank" teXt items are useful but, I agree, somewhat painful.

HTH

Re: measures per line?

Reply #4 –
Actually, my wish in the wishlist is not to have a constant
number of measures per lines, but to have the possibility
to specify a "line break", very similar to the "page break"
in word processors.

Of course, between two forced "line breaks", the measures
should be arranged automatically by NWC, on several lines
if necessary.

Re: measures per line?

Reply #5 –
If you look at all the professionally produced pieces of music, they all fit as many bars of music on a line as is practical (just like noteworthy composer) If you want different bar spacing try inserting spaces as text to move things over. You may find that adding two or three spaces in just on bar will remove en entire bar from that line.

Re: measures per line?

Reply #6 –
While I'm not a programmer, I don't buy the idea that this issue is too hard to realize. I used another notation program for a long while that, although it was very tedious to manipulate, had the option of breaking the lines where one wanted them to break, and the notes were then proportioned nicely across the line. I still like NWC better, all things considered, but find this issue to be one of the most important features for the next version. I am trying to prepare manuscripts quickly for performance and/or publication, so that I can go on with the next "opus." If I have to take an NWC file and re-do it into a "pagemaker" program (which I don't want to consider right now), have I gained something by NWC's ease of use? End of soapbox. NWC still gets three hearty cheers!

Re: measures per line?

Reply #7 –
ummm...I couldn't find ANY professionally published music that did not
have a set number of bars per line in each tune. (the most common is four.)
I looked through VOLUMES of music.<br><br>As for the "too hard to realize" issue,
my brother has notation software that does it, but he has a Mac, ....of course.

Re: measures per line?

Reply #8 –
Perhaps that's true of piano copies and lead sheets.
Orchestrations have varied and varying measures per line - which personally I prefer.
I find the structure of fixed measures per line too rigid and illogical.
Some parts - especially strings - can be quite florid for some measures and then have bar after bar of whole note fills.
If your not careful fixing the number of measures per line may leave you with a couple of busy bars then pages of two bar to the line whole note measures.
It's better if the measures per line adjust to fit the density of the bar - as NoteWorthy Composer does.
For what it's worth- the Music Arrangers Guild set 4 bars per line and 10 lines per page as standard.
As for other software - I'm sure Finale would do everything you want - but you have chosen NWC for other reasons - let me guess....?

Re: measures per line?

Reply #9 –
Oliver hit it exactly right with a suggestion for a "line break" command. My immediate task at hand is a refrain of few measures followed by many optional verses. It would be most readable with a line break at the end of the refrain.

A fixed number of measures per line for an entire selection would be useful in some situations and ridiculous in others.

Re: measures per line?

Reply #10 –
I've looked at a lot of hymnals, representing a fair
selection of American hymnals over the last century.

I have not seen any that tried to maintain a fixed number
of measures per line even within a song. Some songs happen
to have a fixed number of measures per line; A few
songs with regular phrase lengths corresponding to page
size, also happen to end each phrase at the end of a line.
(Most songs do not, and do not.)

Most songs end a line at the end of a measure. A few end
it in a random place in the middle of a measure. Many songs
have phrases that begin on the upbeat; where the phrases
of such songs fit nicely on one line, they _invariably_
break the line at the phrase break, which is _not_ a measure
boundary.

I know that English hymnals may not play by all of these
rules; nor do nineteenth-century American hymnals or even
modern American "Service Books." But that still leaves a
mass body of musical notation.

fit nice

Re: measures per line?

Reply #11 –
Just for the record, line break and page break have been on
my wish list since March.

Re: measures per line?

Reply #12 –
A couple of people in this string have mentioned other software which will do this. "Finale," and an earlier version called "MusicProse" will allow for breaks either by a specific number of measures per line, or by manually breaking up the lines. While it can be time-consuming to break lines up manually, it does allow great flexibility in creating parts (particularly band and orchestra parts from a full score). However, "Finale" costs several hundred dollars, and does not print music of that much greater quality than NWC. I'll keep wishing too, but I can't complain about the quality of NWC for the price.

Re: measures per line?

Reply #13 –
Wow! I would'nt have imagine this thread would grow so much.

When I was sayng "too hard to realize", I was talking about _my_ experience when I build myself a musical notation program -under DOS 6.22, from scratch, in T. Pascal 4- although I used a fixed spacing at that time.
I've seen how further (!) Eric went since, But I still consider it at hard. Hard for the user too, for it can really be "time-consuming" (sic) to manually place (and remove) line breaks. For what I consider the most important is the ability to care for the printing format at the very last moment. And I do want to be able to change my mind about the paper size, orientation (but keeping the staff size) until last moment --and after.

Olivier is right, the ability to add manually a line-break would be great. If it can be easily to find where you put it without to have to "preview-print" again to find out where.
But this leads to a problem : the line-break may perfectly fit when printing a lead score alone, but NOT when printing the conductor's... So what?? An option indicating for what type of printing you must use it ?? That would be a nightmare for the users.

When you wanna buy a painting, if there is something you don't like in it you don't buy it neither do you ask the painter to change it.
For shareware it's different, I know, but why don't you try to use the existing features to their maximum extent ? Try to more use your imagination...

La suite au prochain épisode.

NWCly yours,
                a HRU.

Re: measures per line?

Reply #14 –
Yes, you're right, it could be difficult to choose where
to place a line break before the very last moment.
Then, it could be just a feature within the "preview-print":
line breaks wouldn't be set within the score, but only when
printing.

And yes, I know that NWC is a shareware, I am *very* happy
with it for its high quality and its low price. But since
a wish list exists and wish list items are often included
in next versions, then I would be silly if I didn't ask for
what I would like to get.

Re: measures per line?

Reply #15 –
The actual wording of my wish list item was:

The ability to force an end of line (with appropriate bar stretching to fill the line)
would be useful, particularly when setting songs with multiple verses (and even more
particularly with unequal length lines) - it is much easier to match the words with the
music if each line of music can be associated with a line of verse, particularly if the
verses have to be printed separately rather than as lyric lines within the stave. A
natural corollary from this is to be able to force a new page (independently adjustable
top and bottom margins for each page would accomplish the same end and be even
more flexible).

So I'm not suggesting that we always would specify the line/page breaks - as has been noted, this would be a retrograde step. Independent margins would be very useful for medleys. Nevertheless I agree that the NWC way is very convenient (and very clever!) most of the time. It's just those odd occasions when ......
 

Re: measures per line?

Reply #16 –
Now you can. With the 1.70 version, you may add the option to "break" at any bar you want.
You can even break lines inside a measure: add a bar line with force system break option, and in the "visibility" tab, choose "never".

HTH,
          Dominique