Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Fonts for lyrics (Read 7102 times) previous topic - next topic

Fonts for lyrics

Several questions about lyric fonts: first, when I try to install a user-defined font, NWC just ignores it and uses the default font; what am I missing?

Second, how can I enter lyrics in the Cyrillic alphabet (I have Cyrillic fonts in Word).

Third, is it possible to compose lyrics in MS Word and then import them into NWC? If so, how?

Stephen R.

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #1 –
I haven't had problems using alternate fonts for lyrics, but maybe that's because I stick to varieties of TNR/Arial, etc. Are you sure that you are choosing your desired user font in page setup?

As for composing in Word then transferring lyrics: Use copy (highlight, CTRL-C) in Word. When you have your Lyrics window open in NWC, paste using CTRL-V. It will not paste the font, nor any special formatting, just the keystrokes. If your composition has more than one set of lyrics, you will have to do this separately for each lyric set (easiest is to first paste all lyrics in one place, then cut-and-paste lyrics within NWC).

You can also copy lyrics out of NWC and paste them into Word.

Don't forget to manually hyphenate the lyric syllables.

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #2 –
For your second question; does your OS have support for Cyrrilic alphabet, ie Russian or otherwise lang support?

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #3 –
Just to double check, make sure of the following (assuming you are using Windows 98 or equivalent).

1. Go to Control Panel, Fonts: is the Cryllic font installed? If so fine. If not, you will need to install it.

2. In Noteworthy, go to page setup and select font. For lyrics, select the desired cryllic font and size. It should work (I was even able to have lyrics done in guitar chord grid patterns, so it should work for you as well).

3. Once you have the cryllic font and size seleted in a base file, you may want to save it to the NWC template folder with an appropriate name (such as "Cryllic"). Then, whenever you desire cyrillic lyrics, you can just choose "new" and that particular template.

Hope that helps.

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #4 –
1 and 2) You can define the font for lyrics from File | Page Setup | Fonts | Staff Lyric.

3) You can copy and paste lyrics as simple text using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V in the lyric editor. Only the text itself can be passed this way. Formatting done in Word or elsewhere is not supported in the staff lyric.

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #5 –
I have Windows ME; I do have Russian language support, and can compose texts in Russian in Word (not, however, in any of several fonts I have downloaded--I am still working on this). But when I try to bring the Cyrillic into NWC it ignores me and goes right to the default font. Yes, I do the Page Setup Fonts procedure, but to no effect.

Stephen R.

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #6 –
It may be that your strategy, or choice of font, is somehow out of the ordinary.

I have multi-language support (see your Windows setup). Although I did not try any special Cyrillic font, Arial and TNR have Baltic language support as "ALT+0nnn" characters. I tried them, and they work just great within NWC as lyrics. I did not even have to change my default font (for me, TNR).

Could it be that your characters are being chosen within Word by a command-keystroke combination that is not otherwise recognized? For example, the standard fonts allow the combination CTRL+' followed by e to produce the e-accent (French) within Word, but this is specific to Word.

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #7 –
VERY HARD TO BELIEVE!!!

The Font Selections in the Page setup Menu is very accurate! I use them myself, and whatever font I wat to modify, it uses it to perfection; it even follows the size change when I resize my chart!

The Staff Lyrics line that you modified should give you what you told it to give! I once assigned a foreign musical font to this line - ran out of "user font" lines! - and got screwed when they asked me to put lyrics to one line!!! ;-)

Make sure you do assign your russian font to the "Staff Lyrics", and no other, otherwise, you could wake up someday with surprises when you print - as it did to me!!! User 1 and others will do you absolutely no good there!!

Good luck!

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #8 –
Why don't you send us a sample that demonstrates the problem?

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #9 –
Thank you all for your replies. I will try to do as you advise and let you know how it works. I apologize for not responding more promptly; my computer crashed disastrously and it took some time to get it back up, and more to restore the lost files (those I composed in Word or NWC will simply have to be done over from scratch). Robert Allgeyer's report of Baltic fonts successfully imported into NWC gives me the idea of trying that myself--es varu rakstiit latvju valodaa "Word"-aa, un arii leis'u valodaa--I can do it in e-mail too, but it comes out nonsense at the other end, so I have used the Baltic fonts only in Word so far. I'll see if I can get them into NWC. If I want to bring a font into a NWC template, do I use the same procedure described on pp. 28-29 of the User's Guide?

Stephen Reynolds

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #10 –
Well, I tried. I composed a text in Cyrillic in Word, copied it to the clipboard, and pasted it to the Lyrics window, where, no matter what font I specified, it was immedately converted to gibberish in the Latin alphabet. So I redid the same text in Slovak Latin orthography in Word, copied, pasted, and the results were that some of the "special" letters (s hacek, at least) came out all right; most (c hacek, for example) were converted into the same letter minus diacritical; and some (z hacek, for example) were displayed as boxes. Print preview showed exactly the same. (For Allgeyer kgs/ponas: I haven't tried Baltic yet, but the letters I used as examples are equally found in Lithuanian and Latvian, so I am tolerably certain of equal failure there.) There is supposed to be a character map that gives the numbers to use with ALT to get the same letters, but my system (Windows ME, Office 2000) simply does not have any such thing. So I went on the internet and did a search--it has to be there somewhere. All I found, however, was tables for Western European languages. Si queria escribir en espanol, todo seria muy facil. Alas, what I want to do is to set Lyrics in Slavonic, and so far NWC has consistently frustrated all my efforts. I have activated all the multilanguage resources I am aware of in Windows, including the keyboard, and I can do most of what I need in Word, but it cannot, so far, be done in NWC or done in Word and transferred to NWC. Obviously I am missing something here, because everyone else can do it. It's frustrating.

Stephen R.

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #11 –
Stephen, I am certain that there is no inherent difficulty using whatever font one wishes (whether or not it is Latin encoded) in NWC lyrics. I have even tried it using a symbolic font that shows pictures of animals! This is with Windows 98.

Under certain circumstances, moving fonts from one application to another may cause an encoding change. For example, I can open a WMF from NWC in either Irfan View or Adobe Illustrator, and it will look correct. But if I open the same WMF on the same computer (all other things equal) in a certain "brand X" drawing program, the NWC font is re-encoded so that letter of the Latin alphabet appear in place of the NWC musical notation. Thus, the problem has to to with the interpretation of fonts by the "brand X" program, not by NWC or by Windows.

How are you getting access to the specialized Russian or Cyrillic characters in your word processor? If they are selected by keystroke combinations rather than coosing them directly from the character map, that might be the problem. In French, there is no difficulty using "CTRL+singlequote" then "e" to produce the accented-e character in MS Word. Once placed in a document, the character is no longer a keystroke combination, but a single character. Could it be that whatever you are using is remembering the special characters as keystroke combinations? Try selecting your Russian characters from the character map, inside or outside NWC.

There is one other possibility: Some fonts have multi-language support that involves more than 256 characters. When a non-Latin set is chosen, the font reader internally re-maps the font. For example, some of the well-known web fonts have Arabic, Turkish, or Hebrew characters that do not appear on the standard character map. If this re-mapping information is not passed across programs, then there will be a problem. Have you tried copying your character from the source word processor to an application (not in the same software suite) other than NWC?

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #12 –
Aha! I realized what I'm doing that Steven is probably not doing.

I use a freeware program called "Character Map Pro" by Alexandre Gorbatchev. It is widely available on the Internet -- just use your search engine to find it. My version is 1.81, but there are later versions. This is the program that will appear for me, whenever I request a character map (because I customized the shortcut).

Character Map Pro not only gives a larger image than the standard Windows character map, it does something that the standard won't do: It allows the user to access the non-Latin character set of multilanguage fonts. There is a drop-down box that allows you to locate, for example, the Cyrillic character set in and font that has one. Then, by double-clicking the characters, you can copy them to the clipboard and paste them wherever. This is what I have been using, and it works. It does not require any other special capabilities.

But if you rely on the standard Windows character map, it keeps you in the Latin set, even if you have multi-language capability installed.

A good choice for Cyrillic with mild serifs is "Georgia," free from Microsoft and part of the new browser updates.

One difficulty with Character Map Pro is that it copies at 8 points, like it or not. This doesn't seem to matter to NWC, but does matter if you paste into a word processor document.

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #13 –
Liels paldies!

I'll see if Alexander Gorbachev (any relation to Mikhail, I wonder?) can solve the problem. And I have been composing on the keyboard when possible, but the trouble is that what I am doing now is not Russian (or Ukrainian, Bielorussian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Backa Ruthenian, etc,) but Slavonic. I have not yet found a font that allows me to enter all the letters from the keyboard (so before I even get to NWC there is a problem), and at least one adds diacriticals by means of "dead" keys. But if I just skip the diacriticals for now, and go from the Gorbachevian Character Map as you suggest, that may work. I'll certainly give it a try. I expect Estonian might be easier, come to think of it, because the umlaut letters exist in Western European languages too--but then there's the unrounded "o", isn't there. So it really would experience the same difficulties as Lithuanian, or Slavonic.

Thanks again!

Stephen R.

Re: Fonts for lyrics

Reply #15 –
Yes! Many thanks, Mr Allgeyer! Character Map Pro does the job. In addition, for Slavonic I need CyrWin to switch to the "alternative keyboard"--that way I can enter most letters from the keyboard, and need to resort to ALT + 0XXX only for a few of them. With these two programs I am finally getting the job done. Your example is quite convincing (although the text is gibberish; also one letter is Ukrainian rather than Russian, but that just proves that it will accommodate any language if you have the proper font).
I have successfully used both the "Staroslav" and "Irmologion" Slavonic fonts. Russian, Ukrainian, etc. would be a piece of cake by comparison.

Paldies jums!

Stephen Reynolds