Converting Music Notation

juneymoon · 01-24-2012, 01:35 AM

Hello everyone,
I am new to this forum. However I could use your help. I got brilliant idea the other day to offer my musical instruction book online as an ebook. doing some research about how to do this I download "calibre" to help with the conversions. from PDF to Epub. I was totally surprised with the output after I tried to convert a few pages from my book. to say the layout was totally not the same would be an understatement. Can anyone offer me ideas of how I might get mt music to come out as it was created? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Juneymoon

DSpider · 01-24-2012, 04:25 AM

Welcome. I'll just copy-paste this because I'm tired of explaining it every single day, in some form or another:

"PDF is the worst possible format to convert FROM. It was designed as an output format. This subject has been beaten to death around here because a lot of PDFs aren't tagged PDFs - meaning that letters (and a lot of times small groups of letters) resemble something like floating objects on a blank paper, each with their own coordinates and extra baggage. So it's very difficult to get a 1:1 conversion. A lot of formatting will be lost, some will get interpreted wrong, etc..."

Here's what you could do:

Run the PDF through ABBYY FineReader 11, proofread it there (meaning you read the book in FineReader), export as .odt or .rtf, do the layout in "Atlantis Word Processor" or "OpenOffice with the Writer2ePub" as these two can export straight to ePub. Then proofread the final product again, preferably on an e-reader or at least in ADE (Adobe Digital Editions) given that most e-reading devices are ADE-powered. Another route would be to use Word 2010, export as Filtered HTML, import the HTML file into Sigil, manually tweak the code but you should know that Word adds a lot of garbage and even the most up-to-date version can't produce a 1:1 HTML file. It's unbelievable. You'd think Microsoft would have the resources to pull it off, but noooo... There's a $99 program called "Word Cleaner" that I have yet to try. For $99 it better do dishes and clean my kitchen too.

If you only need a few certain glyphs you could embed fonts and define them in the style.css file. Otherwise stick to PNG images for the music sheets or whatever.

juneymoon · 01-24-2012, 09:41 AM

@DSpider

Thanks for your reply. I follow your instructions and let you know how things turn out. I appreciate that you would give a detailed reply.

Thanks

petrucci · 04-25-2012, 08:13 AM

I have tried my hand at e-music publishing. I ended up using image files for the notated music, as the electronic systems did not preserve my formatting.

Kittybriton · 08-21-2012, 04:52 PM

My experience so far suggests that Petrucci's solution is the best work-around we have to date. PDF is a long-established and stable format, but having been conceived before things like smartphones, I think perhaps the applications for it are dwindling in favor of the ePub format.

01-24-2012, 01:35 AM	#1
juneymoon Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: none	Converting Music Notation Hello everyone, I am new to this forum. However I could use your help. I got brilliant idea the other day to offer my musical instruction book online as an ebook. doing some research about how to do this I download "calibre" to help with the conversions. from PDF to Epub. I was totally surprised with the output after I tried to convert a few pages from my book. to say the layout was totally not the same would be an understatement. Can anyone offer me ideas of how I might get mt music to come out as it was created? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Juneymoon

01-24-2012, 04:25 AM	#2
DSpider Evangelist Posts: 450 Karma: 343115 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Romania Device: PW2 2014	Welcome. I'll just copy-paste this because I'm tired of explaining it every single day, in some form or another: "PDF is the worst possible format to convert FROM. It was designed as an output format. This subject has been beaten to death around here because a lot of PDFs aren't tagged PDFs - meaning that letters (and a lot of times small groups of letters) resemble something like floating objects on a blank paper, each with their own coordinates and extra baggage. So it's very difficult to get a 1:1 conversion. A lot of formatting will be lost, some will get interpreted wrong, etc..." Here's what you could do: Run the PDF through ABBYY FineReader 11, proofread it there (meaning you read the book in FineReader), export as .odt or .rtf, do the layout in "Atlantis Word Processor" or "OpenOffice with the Writer2ePub" as these two can export straight to ePub. Then proofread the final product again, preferably on an e-reader or at least in ADE (Adobe Digital Editions) given that most e-reading devices are ADE-powered. Another route would be to use Word 2010, export as Filtered HTML, import the HTML file into Sigil, manually tweak the code but you should know that Word adds a lot of garbage and even the most up-to-date version can't produce a 1:1 HTML file. It's unbelievable. You'd think Microsoft would have the resources to pull it off, but noooo... There's a $99 program called "Word Cleaner" that I have yet to try. For $99 it better do dishes and clean my kitchen too. If you only need a few certain glyphs you could embed fonts and define them in the style.css file. Otherwise stick to PNG images for the music sheets or whatever. Last edited by DSpider; 01-24-2012 at 04:29 AM.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
music for e-readers - free ambient music download - development possibilities	pureambient	Deals and Resources (No Self-Promotion or Affiliate Links)	19	05-25-2011 09:02 AM
PDF notation, screenplay reading - Kindle 3	kidblue	Amazon Kindle	2	10-02-2010 07:20 PM
Android Music notation app?	fgruber	enTourage Archive	0	09-23-2010 10:04 AM
Readers with freehand notation capabilities	emai7s2	Which one should I buy?	8	09-14-2010 05:11 AM
Advice for musical notation pages	Elfwreck	Workshop	9	06-01-2009 11:03 AM

01-24-2012, 09:41 AM	#3
juneymoon Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: none	@DSpider Thanks for your reply. I follow your instructions and let you know how things turn out. I appreciate that you would give a detailed reply. Thanks

04-25-2012, 08:13 AM	#4
petrucci Groupie Posts: 198 Karma: 1647827 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: Kindle Paperwhite	I have tried my hand at e-music publishing. I ended up using image files for the notated music, as the electronic systems did not preserve my formatting.

08-21-2012, 04:52 PM	#5
Kittybriton Member Posts: 15 Karma: 48138 Join Date: Aug 2012 Device: FBReader, Cool Reader and Aldiko (Android Tablet)	My experience so far suggests that Petrucci's solution is the best work-around we have to date. PDF is a long-established and stable format, but having been conceived before things like smartphones, I think perhaps the applications for it are dwindling in favor of the ePub format.

Advert

Advert