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Topic: Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office (Read 4212 times) previous topic - next topic

Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office

I have three Cyrillic fonts with civil-style old-orthography letters.  One of these, WP Cyrillic A, cannot be used with NoteWorthy Composer because the font does not have a hyphen!  (Is this crazy or what?)  The other two are XSerif Old Russian and Elizabeth TT.  They have essentially the same encoding except for old-orthography characters.

I have prepared a file in NWC with the lyrics in XSerif Old Russian and the same file with the lyrics in Elizabeth TT.  They look fine in NWC.  I then put each in turn into Print Preview and hit the copy button.  I copied the files as “Clipboard (Windows-format Metafile)” and pasted them into an Open Office file.  In each case the music looks all right in Open Office, but the text is reduced to a bunch of boxes.  I also tried copying the files in the alternative manner, as “Placeable Metafile (*.wmf)”—I have no idea what this is, but it seemed worth trying.  Pasting this into the Open Office file produced bizarre results:  no music at all, and the text was all right except for the lines containing old-orthography characters.  One of these was converted to Latin-alphabet gibberish, the other to a row of boxes.

I will post this message in both forums (NoteWorthy Composer and Open Office and hope that someone can provide a solution to the problem of Slavonic text in an NWC file and then copying it into an Open Office file.  (I have not yet attempted this with the old-style Slavonic Cyrillic letters, for which I have several fonts, because the source I am trying to reproduce used the civil style.  I hate to think what problems I will have when I try to use a Slavonic font with the alphabet in the old style.)

Also, in the Latin alphabet I cannot get the c-caron (c-hacek, c-makcen) to come out in Open Office, even if I change the language to Slovak.

Stephen

PS. Also had a file with text in Hungarian.  This worked fine in NWC and also when I copied into OO file--including the long umlauts, which as far as I know do not exist in any other language.

Re: Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office

Reply #1 –
Do you have the current version of OO.o? There were significant font-related problems in 1.0, which were addressed along the way to 1.1. By the 1.1 beta most if not all of these were corrected. (The notable exception being the "Crescendo" font, which has trouble in other apps also.)

1.1 Final has now been released. The main difference AFAICT is that it's been considerably streamlined, and loads a lot faster than the beta did.

Re: Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office

Reply #2 –
Do you have a recent version of Open Office? Earlier versions had problems with many non-Latin and symbolic fonts. That's been corrected in Open Office.

Get back to us, on that. Also, what is your operating system? Some users of Windows 2000 (not 95, not 98, not XP) have reported problems with my own fonts, suggesting that there is something about Win2000 font rendering that is unlike others.

Re: Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office

Reply #3 –
Apparently, Fred and I responded (nearly) simultaneously!

Re: Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office

Reply #4 –
I found and fixed the problems with the Crescendo font. The modified version should appear on the Scriptorium in a few days. You'll know it's the modified version, because the zip file includes an identifying README file.

Re: Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office

Reply #5 –
Why not try insert into PDF Creator (free download - Soundforge) if you just want realiable transportable graphics etc.

Re: Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office

Reply #6 –
But I don't think that was the problem at hand. There are many reasons why someone would want to copy a metafile from NWC, and paste it into a word processor (including Open Office). For example, that would allow you to add graphic images, make visual edits, or combine your music with other kinds of content. The older versions of Open Office had a problem with certain kinds of fonts. That's been fixed.

Incidentally, if you do use Open Office with metafiles from NWC, I do not recommend using the built-in PDF capability of Open Office, unless they have made some recent changes. The built-in capability doesn't do as good a job with drawn objects (such as staffs).

Now, for an alternative strategy to the original question. It is tedious, but it works:

When you use the NWC1.75 lyrics editor, you are entering "real" lyrics. That is, the program recognizes that the syllables are to be attached to notes on the staff. If you re-position the lyrics line, all of the syllables move. Alas, NWC1.75 only allows one font (and one code page from that font) to be used for all lyrics in a document, even if on separate staves.

What you can do is use "fake" lyrics, too. "Fake" lyrics are individual text items, one syllable at a time. These can be positioned so that they attach to notes, but you have to place them one by one. The advantage is that you can specify several fonts (or several code pages) as user fonts, and choose whichever you need on a syllable-by-syllable basis.

Re: Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office

Reply #7 –
To answer the question, I have Windows ME.  I am indeed trying to get the NWC into the same file with text perpared with a word processor.  I would like to have the musical example and the commentary on it in the same file, but I am just about to give up.

Today I went to download OO 1.1.  It turned out that to do that I had first to download the current edition of Java; OO 1.1 wouldn't work with old Java.  So it got pretty complex, but I finally got it all done and now have updated Java *and* updated OO.  The only thing is, when I open the file with XSerif Old Russian it still displays a bunch of boxes.

All three of these old-orthography fonts are eccentric.  That is probably to be expected; to be interested in such fonts you have to be a bit eccentric yourself.  (Just look at me!)  I have no idea what to do now.  So I guess I will just give up on the idea of combining NWC and text in a single file.

The other old problem that persists, yea, even unto OO 1.1 is that the letter _zhivete_ in the Staroslav font is turned into a box in OO just as it is in MSWord.  The same letter in the Kirillica WinCyr font has not problem, and in a word-processor file I can simply substitute it.  Of course, I cannot do this in NWC, and Kirillica WinCyr lacks a number of other things that I want, so just using it as the lyrics font is not an attractive solution.

Chort voz'mi, as the Russias say.  Velns lai parauj, in other words.

Stephen

Re: Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office

Reply #8 –
Stephen:

If you go to my web site at

http://www.icogitate.com/~ergosum

you will see my e-mail address (it is not an automatic link). Place your Slavonic (or, whatever) fonts in a ZIP file, and send them to me as an e-mail attachment. Be sure to have a clear subject line, so that I can pick your e-mail out from the numerous virus junk going around.

I can't promise that I can do anything. But I'll look. Don't send anything except the fonts, and maybe an explanation (don't send a NWC or OO file).

Re: Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office

Reply #9 –
I got Stephen's fonts, and may or may not have solved the problem. I'm posting this here, so that he will know to look for my e-mail among the SoBig junk.

Re: Problems with NWC files with Slavonic text in Open Office

Reply #10 –
Follow-up: Re-coding the fonts seems to have solved the problem.