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Topic: Staff size when printed (Read 3794 times) previous topic - next topic

Staff size when printed

I have Win ME and Mozilla 1.5 with the Noteworthy plugin 1.75a.
On the www.cyberhymnal.org web site, after finding a song, I click Score, which displays the music and lyrics.  When I print it, I usually get only three pairs of staffs per page.

Is there a way to print smaller so that more pairs of staffs appear on the page?  These songs tend to stetch out over too many pages.  I can see no adjustments available anywhere for condensing the printing.

Re: Staff size when printed

Reply #1 –
You can adjust the note size from File - Page Setup, or you can adjust the staff vertical size from the staff properties menu.  Use F2 to get there.

Generally, I find a note size of 16 is generously large for the average player, 14 and 12 are acceptable, and even 10 if you need to squeeze more notes on the page.  That's for parts.  If you're going to print a score, go smaller still and print in landscape mode.

Staff vertical size - sometimes there's a limit to crowded you want your page to be.  It seems to me that adjusting the upper size is more effective in determining when a system will spill over to a new page than the lower than adjusting the lower vertical size.

Aesthetically, if the part is complicated or repetitive, or if it goes into leger line country, you want to have more space between staffs so make the vertical size bigger.

If your second page only has a couple of systems at the top, and a whole bunch of white space, you might as well add vertical size until you get a more even distribution of staffs between the two pages.

Re: Staff size when printed

Reply #2 –
David was talking here of actions available within NoteWorthy Composer, not the plug-in.
But you can do them anyway (in NWC).
I'll add that you can force some system break to enhance the global layout.

But before anything, check that the paper size on which you want to print is the same as the nwc author had in mind. It may be A4 or Letter. Sometimes this is a sufficient reason to have a printed result that seems odd.
HTH!

Re: Staff size when printed

Reply #3 –
Thanks for comments.

However, Marsu, you say I "can do them anyway in NWC"  What do you mean by NWC?  The plugin seems to have no ways of making adjustments to note size or text size.

Do I need the Noteworthy Player?  I prefer not to have to buy the Composer.

Please tell me more.

Re: Staff size when printed

Reply #4 –
>The plugin seems to have no ways of making adjustments to note size or text size.

Exactly. You are correct.

Re: Staff size when printed

Reply #5 –
The NoteWorthy Player has less capabilities than the browser plug-in (except that it can play multiple file from the command line, but this is a rare need), but it can print as a PDF reader can do with a PDF file.
If you want to modify an NWC file, then NWC (Composer) is the right tool, as Distiller is a tool to modify PDF files, or Word for .Doc files (Word Viewer is the reader).
Try it, it's worthy :)

Re: Staff size when printed

Reply #6 –
Paul: To summarize the above: You cannot do what you want to do, with either the browser plug-in or the free player.

You would need the full software, Noteworthy Composer (not free), to do what you want to do. The trial edition has usage limitations, and in any case prints a watermark. So the free trial edition would not suit your needs, either.

If you are going to do a lot of printing music in *.nwc format from the Cyber Hymnal, consider buying the program. Understand that especially when the program was new, a lot of users scored music for church - which is why there are so many hymns in *.nwc format. Since the hymns are usually public domain, they could be posted on the Internet for all to see and use.

If you don't want to buy the program, you can do this: From the browser plug-in, print to a PDF file. If you don't have the full Acrobat product, you can get a very good, FREE alternative called "PDFcreator" from www.sourceforge.net.

PDFcreator also allows you to make bitmap images of the document. You can then open the bitmap images in any image editing program (including whatever program came with your computer), crop away excess white space, then place the reduced images into a word processing document.

That's a tedious way of doing it, and it won't produce the sharpest printouts. But it will get you there.

You might also consider screen capture of various portions of the music, then paste the images into a word processing document. Again, this is tedious.
 

Re: Staff size when printed

Reply #7 –
"PDFCreator" is free. "PDF Creator" is not. Just in case...