Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Different Staff sizes on the same print (Read 3926 times) previous topic - next topic

Different Staff sizes on the same print

Hi all,
I want to print different sizes on the same page.
For a group of 4 instruments, I would like to have the main in big and the 3 other smaller, and do this for each player.
If it was a text it would be a police size of 12 for the main and 8 for the others.

When I use the staff property, I only reduce the height but not the police size.

Thanks for your help

Re: Different Staff sizes on the same print

Reply #1 –
I think I know what you mean in that the piano part of something for violin and piano might show the violin part with a smaller staff and smaller notes.  Unfortunately, this facility is not available in NWC 1.75b.

Re: Different Staff sizes on the same print

Reply #2 –
Actually, it can be done, using the metafile capability, both in NWC1.75 and in NWC2. This requires placing graphic images into a word processing document. It is time-consuming, but it works.

(1) You will need to force system breaks (this is described in NWC help).

(2) Using print preview, create placeable metafiles of each page at its correct size (using the paper size and margins intended when you print to paper).

(3) Then, go back and change your printer settings for a larger width of paper. Again, create metafiles with these settings. These metafiles will be more spread out horizontally on each page, but they will have the same systems (because you forced them) as on the regular-sized paper.

(4) Open a new word processor (such as MS Word) document. Place the metafiles, and crop away the staffs that you don't want to see. For staffs that are to be full sized, use the regular-sized metafiles. For staffs that are to be smaller, use the metafiles created with over-size printer settings, and shrink them to fit. When the horizontal size is shrunk to fit the actual margins, the vertical size will scale accordingly.

It may be helpful to pre-calculate. For example, suppose that the final printed size will be on 8-1/2" by 11" paper with 1" margins. In this case, each full-size staff width will be 6-1/2" wide. Now suppose that you want a smaller staff to be printed at 4/5 of the visual size. You would create metafiles on larger page size, with margins equal to 6-1/2" divided by 4/5, (do the math).

Re: Different Staff sizes on the same print

Reply #3 –
Robert, I was wondering about doing it that way. I was going to suppress the unwanted staves in the setup and stretch the ones I wanted. NWC has fixed note spacing horizontally; considering that, when the stretching is done, does everything still line up OK, including the bar lines?
I'm about to set a choral work work with continuo and small orchestra so it would be very handy to be able to get the narrow staves too.

Re: Different Staff sizes on the same print

Reply #4 –
Lining up the bars lines might be tricky. When I replied above, I had something different in mind (which would not require alignment that way).

I haven't played much with this, but if a bar line isn't where you want it to be, you can try inserting some blank text with "preserve width" just before a bar line, to move it to the right. It might be better to use the non-breaking space (decimal code 160) than the ordinary space. This is a trial-and-error thing.

Since you would be using metafiles, it is sometimes possible to un-group or edit the metafile as a drawing object within your word processor, and manually move a bar line. But be aware that this method is unreliable, since the drawing capabilities or your word processor may be inadequate for the purpose.

You can draw your own bar lines within a word processor, if you can figure out how to make the musical bar lines go away. Merely omitting bars from the stray staff (except for system ends) might or might not mis-align the notes.

Re: Different Staff sizes on the same print

Reply #5 –
Scaling is impossible inside NWC because scaling fonts affects both vertical and horizontal dimensions. It was a nice idea until I looked at it seriously.

I have found an easy way that looks OK at 75% and is very readable.
Print the file to postscript and extract a 600dpi mono image with ghostscript. In PhotoImpact (or your other grahics program) select the required staves to be squashed vertically and convert them into an object. They can be squashed as required then merged with the rest.
The slightly elongated noteheads are very legible. As I use 17pt as normal that makes th smaller staves 12.75pt quite a saving!
 

Re: Different Staff sizes on the same print

Reply #6 –
I  think it's Robert who wrote " ...if you can figure out how to make the musical bar lines go away."

The bar line properties include visibility settings - they can be hidden.