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Topic: NWC to PDF again (Read 8803 times) previous topic - next topic

NWC to PDF again

Have you ever tried NWC to PDF conversion nowadays? I did. Here is what I get: none. We can't use Fred's method through GhostView because "print to file" option does not come up with the print dialog. Printing via PDF writer results with so awful images that don't even have noteheads. (Embedding all used fonts doesn't work.)

So, one can suggest copying the print preview. I tried it. When I chose Windows metafile, I got a very small image taking the one third horizontal space of a wordpad doc (portrait A4 with default margins). Saving the wmf as a file resulted as same as the distorted pdf I got through PDF writer.

I uninstalled and re-installed NWC (1.70 final) but nothing changed.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have three serious bugs, two of which related to each other:

1) Absence of print-to-file option,
2) Bad resulting printing through PDF writer,
3) Bad resulting metafiles when saved, small images (in contrast to former versions' huge ones) if preview copied to clipboard.

Meanwhile, why is bitmap file option always disabled?

Thanks in advance.

Re: NWC to PDF again

Reply #1 –
Try using the Acrobat Distiller as your printer instead of the PDFWriter. The PDFWriter has some limitations that seem to not work well with Noteworthy. The Distiller, on the other hand, works great. I tried it on a 1.7 file.

Re: NWC to PDF again

Reply #2 –
I was having problems with this also. Fred Nachbaur suggested printing to a Postscript printer -- I've had good success with an Apple printer driver -- and using its "print to file" option, which creates a .prn-named file that is actually a postscript file. A simple Ghostscript script can print from that prn file to a pdf-formatted and .pdf-named file. Another hint: make sure you have Adobe Acrobat reader 4.x for double-checking the final product.

Re: NWC to PDF again

Reply #4 –
I agree with these comments. I can't afford Distiller and PDFWriter dropped noteheads, clefs, etc. What to do? I haven't tried this yet, but I suppose one could use the Windows print driver to print to a file. Then the recipient would have to "copy /b lpt1:" or something like that, assuming they have the port captured.

Re: NWC to PDF again

Reply #5 –
Yes, you can use the DOS COPY /B command to dump a PostScript file directly to a printer ... but it has to be a PostScript printer. Much better IMO to tell the user to load the file into GSview, from where it will print to anything for which you have a Windows driver.

Re: NWC to PDF again

Reply #6 –
Here is an alternative: If you own a drawing program that can "save as PDF," then try creating a placeable Windows Metafile (WMF) via the "print preview" function in NWC. Bring the WMF into the drawing program (you may need to re-scale it) then save as PDF.

I do this all the time using Adobe Illustrator as the drawing program, although I imagine it would work in Corel Draw and similar programs. (Incidentally, there is some capability to edit the appearance within the drawing program).

Re: NWC to PDF again

Reply #7 –
I have just used CorelDraw 7 to edit and print a file from NoteWorthy via the "print preview and copy to placeable metafile .wmf" method. The only problem I ran into was that the stems of the notes got slightly shifted and I had to push them back where they belong. That could be a serious problem, if you have lots of staffs and measures to edit as they had to be done each individually.

But CD7 allowed editing of everything: the notes, the stems, the flags, the staff and the text - all seperately from each other. It was just what I needed to put in the extensive notes I'm using.

Thanks for your help,

Frank

Re: NWC to PDF again

Reply #8 –
Printing to a PDF-file is easy since I discovered a free PDF-creator programme on the internet. It works as follows.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

use the above link to download the installation software. Save this on your computer. Once saved you can double click it to start installation.

this software works as an extra printer on your computer. Instead of printing to a printer you now print to pdf-creator. It creates a pdf-file which can be saved on your hard disk.

This programme has also the possibility of combining several files to one pdf-file.

Advantage is that you can use these pdf-files for sending your music to friends and others who don't have any NWC software.

Re: NWC to PDF again

Reply #9 –
Quote
This programme has also the possibility of combining several files to one pdf-file.

I've been using this program for years, and never realized you could add several files to one PDF.  Thanks for the tip.

Re: NWC to PDF again

Reply #10 –
You're welcome.

Did I mention already that it is possible to create your own booklets/programme/prospectus. In short.

- create a frontpage in any word processing programme
- create your musicfile.

  • Print one document to PDF-creator and click << wait >>, somewhere in the left bottom corner;
    then print the next document to PDF-creator;
    then select all files in the list;
    then select << document >> - there is a pull down menu, and select << combine >>
    if necessary you can change the order before that.
After combining you print one document, consisting of all seperate files, to your hard disk. It works fine with me.


The trick is nice when you want to impress others with your composing skills.