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Topic: Making a hymnal (Read 5774 times) previous topic - next topic

Making a hymnal

Hello Everyone,

     I have obtained the neccessary licenses to copy many hymns and have been working for over a year on and off for the use of my church, most work has already been done for me thanks to Cyberhymnal.org. However I have run into a bit of a snag when it comes to actually printing these and setting them up into a traditional hymn book setting.

      The book binding I am not worried about right now, but I was wondering if anyone could help me figure out how I would be able to set two hymns side by side on a single sheet of paper. If you've ever looked in a hymnal I am sure you understand what I mean. If anyone has any insight on this I would be tremendously greateful for your help.

Sincerely,
Ryan

Re: Making a hymnal

Reply #1 –
G'day Ryan,
if you're working from Windows XP, the printer drivers usually have the ability to put multple pages on one sheet...

|Start|Settings|Printers and Faxes|  Right click the required printer, printing preferences and go hunting.  E.G. my Kyocera has the option under "Layout" as Pages per Sheet, while my HP 6110 "all in one" has it under "Features", again as "Pages per Sheet".

Or from within NWC, |File|Print| Properties button, select the appropriate tab in the next dialogue etc..

Otherwise there are other ways.  Some of the others have found useful tools for other OS's.  A search of this forum will find something I'm sure.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Making a hymnal

Reply #2 –
Lawrie's method is also the way I'd do this (and have done when I compiled a small hymn book).

However, in advance of that - If it is in the traditional hymn book style, with the music above (and maybe one verse with the music) and the remaining verses underneath with the verse numbers, then NoteWorthy is not really set up to do this in its own right.

What I had to do was in NoteWorthy, format the music so that it displayed correctly in print preview. Sometimes this really had to be forced using all of the features to make the music fit on about half a page. (Features being system break, point size, margins, reducing the size of the page title text so that the title (hymn number and name) took less space ). You will also need to get the bottom margin right so that it just allows enough room to get the music in. If you have the margin set so that there is a lot of space between the music and the bottom of the print, then you could have problems in the next stage formatting the verses under the music "picture".

Having got that right, copy from print preview and select metafile (version 1.75) or emf file (version 2.00). Put this into your word processor or DTP package. Underneath this you can then format your additional verses.

Having got that right, you can then proceed onto the next hymn that you want on the printed page. Place the next hymn on Page 2. Note - at this stage, these two hymns will be on full pages, one hymn per page.

When you have all of the hymns that you want to print you can then use the method that Lawrie wrote about. In my current system, this is achieved in Word by the following :

Print /  Properties / Page Layout Tab

Select multi-Page and then selecting the number of pages per sheet - in this case 2. You will then get 2 hymns on one landscape page when printed.

It would be very difficult, almost impossible, to do what you want to do without using an additional software package, particularly if you need to format verses as well. Word processing or DTP is the way to go.
Rich.

Re: Making a hymnal

Reply #3 –
Great, appreciate the feedback guys. ;)

Re: Making a hymnal

Reply #4 –
If you're going with a publisher, they probably do not want you to put two "pages" side by side like that.  They'd prefer you keep the pages separately so that they can lay them out according to their binding system (example: for a simple staple in the middle, you'd want pages 1 and 32 together and then 2 and 31 etc; for perfect binding, they use "signatures" of 8 or 16 pages -- that gets really fun.)

If you're your own publisher, then go ahead and use the method Lawrie suggests from whatever program you end up in at the end of the day.  If you don't have the "Pages per Sheet" feature in your print driver, you would have it if you installed PDFCreator.  You would then print to PDF and do the real printing from there.
Sincerely,
Francis Beaumier
Green Bay, WI

Re: Making a hymnal

Reply #5 –
If you're taking a lot of trouble to make a hymn book, you're far better off to make a custom size page in between A4 and A5 and print the pages on their own. Then find someone with a binding cutter to cut the pages so you can insert a plastic spine.This makes a far better job than two-to-a-page printing and fold and staple.You can make a good cover maybe with harder material, the book sits flat, new pages can be inserted later, and really A5 which is half A4 can make the print pretty small. I have done both methods over the ages and the plastic spine (spline?), is the best.

Re: Making a hymnal

Reply #6 –
If you go from Print Preview to Copy to Clipboard, you'll get a copy of (that page of) the hymn on the clipboard. Then you can go to, say, Microsoft Publisher, set up for a booklet, and import (Ctrl-V) the hymn into the page. Or you can use Microsoft Word, set for two columns, but Publisher does a better job printing booklets. If you don't have Microsoft Publisher, there are free replacaments for it such as Ragtime Solo.
Good luck.
LE