Why are these

T

Top Spin

I am writing a beginning piano method in Word (2000). For the graphic
illustrations, I am using Visio (2002) and a music notation program
named Mozart (2005).

I ran into some trouble because the Word document was getting very
large (almost 10MB and growing). This made it slow to load, save, and
work with. So I started looking for alternatives.

I discovered that Mozart can export its music images in a variety of
graphic file formats, so I did a little expermientation. I created a
1-page musical piece (Take Me Out to the Ball Park) in Mozart. I then
exported it in 5 file formats: bmp, emf, jpg, png, and tif.

I then opened each file with Visio and saved it as a Visio file. The
EMF file opened as a full page. All of the other files opened about 6
times the size of a page. All I saw was a small portion in the center
of the sheet music. I had to zoom the document down to about 8% to see
it all.

I then inserted each file into an empty Word document using Insert |
Picture | From file... using the Insert option and save that as a Word
document. All of the files came into Word as a full page. Word must be
doing something to make them fit onto a page.

As a quick test, I inserted the bmp and the emf files into Word
documents with a page size of 4x6. Word scaled the image to fit the
page. When I printed these, the emf version was tine, but clear. In
the bmp version, a lot of the staff lines dropped out.

I then looked at the file sizes and was surprised at the results. The
following table shows the file sizes in KB as reported by Windows
Explorer:

bmp emf jpg png tif
Export 26,064 188 1,313 213 722
Visio 3,178 108 10,271 3,178 3,178
Word 123 41 1,342 234 123
V:W 26:1 3:1 8:1 14:1 26:1

Why are the Visio documents consistently so much larger than the Word
documents containing the same graphics?

Does it have anything to do with the imaes being 6-7 times larger than
a page? But if that is so, then why is the Visio bmp file 1/8 the size
of the bmp export file?

Why did the jpg file grow by 10x and the other two by 4x when loaded
into Visio, but remained the same or shrunk in Word?

I then printed each document. All were about equal quality at 100%
scaling on my HP Laserjet 5000. But when scaled up, the emf file
remained sharp at all sizes. The raster formats started to get fuzzy
edges at 3x and lost some of the fine lines when scaled down below
20-30%.

So, my basic questions is this. It appears that for line art, which is
what most of my stuff it, the EMF format appears superior to the
bitmap formats in every respect. It's smaller in size, scales better,
and edits more quickly.

Are there any reasons not to use EMF exclusively for what I am doing?

--
Running MS Office 2K Pro
with Visio 2002 Standard
PC: HP Omnibook 6000
OS: Win 2K SP-4 (5.00.2195)
Email: Usenet-20031220 at spamex.com
(11/03/04)
 
D

David Sherman

Top Spin wrote on 3/26/05 3:24 PM:
I discovered that Mozart can export its music images in a variety of
graphic file formats, so I did a little expermientation. I created a
1-page musical piece (Take Me Out to the Ball Park) in Mozart. I then
exported it in 5 file formats: bmp, emf, jpg, png, and tif.

I have no answers for you, but...

Don't you mean "Take Me Out To The Ball Game?"
 
B

Barry Graham

Vector Graphics files EMF WMF have the edge as far as I'm concerned.
I've prepared large reports on all manner of things from Computer Music to
CAD Training Manuals using Microsoft Publisher and WMFs.
The files are easy to manipulate in Publsher and as you have noted they are
compact and scale without distortion.
Give Publisher a try if you have it.
I won't say Publisher is a joy to use but it gets the result.

-------------------------------------
Barry Graham
Top Brass Events Band
Melbourne, Australia
www.topbrass.com.au
(e-mail address removed)
 
T

Top Spin

Vector Graphics files EMF WMF have the edge as far as I'm concerned.
I've prepared large reports on all manner of things from Computer Music to
CAD Training Manuals using Microsoft Publisher and WMFs.
The files are easy to manipulate in Publsher and as you have noted they are
compact and scale without distortion.
Give Publisher a try if you have it.
I won't say Publisher is a joy to use but it gets the result.

Do you create the graphics in Publisher or import them from some other
graphics program?

When you say "computer music", does that include lead sheets or other
music notation? Do you create those in Publisher or elsewhere?

I need to create piano music with all of the notation, guitar tabs,
key signatures, accidentals, slurs, etc. I can't imagine doing that in
Publisher, right?
 
M

Mark Nelson [MS]

Images brought into Visio 2002 get converted to bitmap for storage. Visio
2003 leaves images in their native format and can compress images for
smaller file sizes.
 
T

Top Spin

Images brought into Visio 2002 get converted to bitmap for storage. Visio
2003 leaves images in their native format and can compress images for
smaller file sizes.

Will Visio 2003 allow me to open an EMF file (xyz.emf), edit it, and
save it back as xyz.emf? That would be worth the upgrade cost.

I will be upgrading to Office 2003 Professional, is Visio included in
that?

Thanks
 
B

Barry Graham

Top Spin said:
When you say "computer music", does that include lead sheets or other
music notation? Do you create those in Publisher or elsewhere?

NoteWorthy Composer (Shareware $39US to register).
www.noteworthysoftware.com
You can select a portion of a staff or the score to clipboard or file using
a Copy Special command.
You can also Copy a page to a file from the Print Preview.
The files are WMF.
-------------------------------------
Barry Graham
Top Brass Events Band
Melbourne, Australia
www.topbrass.com.au
(e-mail address removed)
 
B

Barry Graham

If you would like some examples of NoteWorthy Composer output pasted into
Word you can contact me at the reply address.

-------------------------------------
Barry Graham
Top Brass Events Band
Melbourne, Australia
www.topbrass.com.au
(e-mail address removed)
 
T

Top Spin

NoteWorthy Composer (Shareware $39US to register).
www.noteworthysoftware.com
You can select a portion of a staff or the score to clipboard or file using
a Copy Special command.
You can also Copy a page to a file from the Print Preview.
The files are WMF.

How do you "select" the portion to be copied?

Do you use the mouse to draw a cropping rectangle around the part you
want to copy?

Do you use the mouse or keyboard to "select" parts of the score?

About a year ago when I got started in this project, I looked at a
number of notation programs including NC. I choose Mozart because it
had the best UI and because of the ourstanding support and
responsiveness of the author.

Back then, I didn't know anything about EMF or WMF. Maybe it's time I
took another look at NC.
 
J

Joe Roberts

Top Spin said:
...
About a year ago when I got started in this project, I looked at a
number of notation programs including NC. I choose Mozart because it
had the best UI and because of the ourstanding support and
responsiveness of the author.

Back then, I didn't know anything about EMF or WMF.
Maybe it's time I took another look at NC.

Usenet newsgroup presence from the NoteWorthy Composer author rarely is
found, but that's just the case here on Usenet forums. Excellent support
exists both at the NWC web site's forum and in a separate (non-Usenet
server) support forum. In addition there's a supportive and helpful
community of NWC users. Some very 'serious' notation work is being done in
NWC these days, with people sharing music, tips, and techniques.

I've used NWC since 1998 for music ranging from simple piano/voice or simple
SATB choral pieces, right out to full orchestral works with 31 staves. I
recommend it highly, and suggest to you it's worth a try.

Joe Roberts
 
B

Barry Graham

Top Spin said:
How do you "select" the portion to be copied?

With Copy Special you select the measures (or part of a measure) with the
mouse or cursor arrows.
When the command is invoked you have the option of copying just the selected
staff or all displayed staves.
The number of staves in the display can be limited to whatever you like.

From the Print Preview the whole displayed page is copied - this can be
cropped after pasting.
The pasted image can be resized without loss of detail in print - that's the
beauty of Metafiles.
The line data is stored as end point co-ordinates - when plotted the line is
swept between the points - therefore no "jaggies" when zoomed to higher
levels or dropouts at low level.
True type fonts follow a similar principle.

I can send examples on request.

Have you considered output as PDF files?

-------------------------------------
Barry Graham
Top Brass Events Band
Melbourne, Australia
www.topbrass.com.au
(e-mail address removed)
 
J

Jezebel

Bitmap formats are nearly always the worst choice -- they are large, and
they degrade if you scale them.

The issue with the images appearing scaled when you open them: a bitmap has
two key properties: size and resolution. Although this information is
encoded in the file format, some MS applications (including Word) ignore the
size and work only from the resolution, scaling the graphic to your screen
resolution (normally 96dpi). So if your graphic is created 10 cm square at
300 dpi, it will be displayed in Word -- and, it seems, in Visio -- at 31.25
cm (300/96).

The differences between the bitmap graphic formats vary a lot according to
the nature of the graphic. All the formats other than plain bmp use some
kind of compression, the effectiveness of which varies depending on what the
thing looks like. Eg, instead of storing each pixel's value, store only the
changes between one row of pixels and the next. This works well with
text-like pages (including music) where much of the graphic consists of
vertical and horizontal lines; but it's lousy for photos.


For the Rolls Royce approach to your project, have a look at the Sibelius
program.
 
M

Mark Nelson [MS]

You cannot directly edit the EMF image in Visio.

Also, Visio is sold separately from Office.
 

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