[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Perhaps there are ways to strip the SVG down, similar to the "Save for Web" on JPGs/PNGs... in Inkscape, you are able to save vector files as "Plain SVG", which strips out a bunch of the extra cruft. Perhaps there is something similar in Illustrator.

The odd thing is that I went in the Illustrator help, and in there it talks about going into the "Save for Web & Devices" dialog box where there's supposed to be an SVG option -- well, I don't have a "Save for Web & Devices" option, there's only a "Save for Web" option, and there's no SVG option in there (just JPEG, GIF and PNG), which seems odd. I suspect that the help files must be geared for CS7 (or whatever it is now), not CS6, which I have. :/

While the bitmap images might look ok on the surface FOR NOW, they will look worse in the future. You can stave it off temporarily by generating much higher resolution bitmap images, but that is only pushing the ball down the road one step. What happens when the next-next higher resolution device comes out? Why spend more time generating a higher resolution PNG of course!

I agree, but if I can't get this stupid transparency thing figured out (and I've just spent the last hour or two searching all over -- again -- to find a way, and still can't seem to figure that out, at least not by using Illustrator) then I think for all those various reasons (including compatibility at this time, etc.) I might as well just stick with PNG.

Although you seem to be iBooks iBooks iBooks,

That's because that's the only device that I own myself! Other than ADE and Sony Reader on my PC, of course. All my family/friends seem to have iPads, too, though, I don't think I personally know anyone (in my "real" life) that has anything other than that. So I guess if I've put emphasis on the iPad/iBooks, it's both for myself and for them, too -- although I am trying to design in a way that things will work on other devices, too, of course (and hence why I think I'm better of sticking with PNGs for this, at least for now).

and hand-crafted, hand-crafted, hand-crafted.

If it's any consolation (for you and everyone putting up with me), I'm getting tired of trying to be fancy-schmancy with everything I do -- my first book was a total pain-in-the-butt to get it converted for Kindle, and I haven't even bothered with my second book (which is only on the iBooks store for now). I might be slow in learning the "KISS" caveat, but it's starting to sink in.

A lot of it is dependent on how exactly the vector image was created as well... was this scanned in, and then changed to paths? Or did you create this file from scratch?

I originally scanned the sheet music (many years ago), and still had the original PSD files for those. I cut those up into individual measures (music-wise) and then opened them in Illustrator and did an "image trace", from which I can then do a "save as" as SVG.

I just learned how to do all that (the Illustrator stuff) the other day -- never did it before. Seems to work great (as you can see with the resulting SVG images I had in the ebook I shared before), except for the lack of transparency issue, of course.

If you generated a vector file straight from a digital source (for example, the output from MuseCore or MusiXTeX), the vector music sheets generated from that would be MUCH smaller in size.... because a straight line would actually be a straight line (a simple draw a line from A to B as thickness X).

Yeah, I would imagine that would indeed be the case -- I know exactly what you mean -- except I'd then have to totally re-create the entire sheet music note-by-note (in software that I'm still rather unfamiliar with).

Like I indicated in a previous reply, this is turning into far more of an ordeal than I'd intended it to be! Heck, I just wanted to add a little sheet music to my book, it's not like I'm going to start publishing sheet music on a regular basis or anything and need to figure out "the perfect way" to do this for clients and stuff.

Apart from that, thanks for all the rest of your explanation(s), and for taking the time to include examples and stuff. I do understand what you mean with ALL your reasons for endeavouring to go with SVG, but as you concluded at the end of your message...

Understandable. I came to the same conclusions for now. Inserting it in EPUBs as bitmap is the most compatible, but definitely keep generating clean vector files in mind.

I think that's basically where I'm at, at least with this project, and at this time/stage in things. I did learn quite a bit in all this discussion, though -- including some handy things in Illustrator which could very well be of use in the future -- and as far as the music goes, instead of just single full-page images it looks like I'll be doing things "measure for measure" instead (to borrow Shakespeare's title), which I'm sure will be nicer for readers out there.

Thanks again for your input!