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Scribus => Beginner Talk => Topic started by: santiclear on April 29, 2024, 11:18:15 PM

Title: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: santiclear on April 29, 2024, 11:18:15 PM
Hello everybody,

I'm quite new here. I was an occasional Adobe InDesign user (on shared hardware I had access to), but for a variety of reasons, including future-proofing my work, I decided to switch to open source.
I am working on a 200-page songbook, using as source material PDFs exported with MuseScore: I would like to add numbering to the individual songs, blank pages, occasional images, occasionally put the content of multiple PDFs on the same page, introductory pages, indexes etc. Basically I'd like to create a book with all the music I've put together.

Last year, while still using InDesing, I made the first attached file - and achieved it with this InDesign workflow:

I tried to do the same in Scribus 1.6.1 on Windows 10, beginning with just 15 pages/15 MuseScore-generated PDFs (40-60 Kb each, I attached a sample of one of them), but:

What am I doing wrong?
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: AdmFubar on April 29, 2024, 11:59:35 PM
Can Music Score export in other formats? Like HTML perhaps?
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: santiclear on April 30, 2024, 12:12:17 AM
MuseScore supports export in PDF, SVG, PNG, MusicXML and MEI. However, MusicXML, while XML based is more of an interchange format for interoperability with other music notation software, and is not quite reliable in layout preservation.
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: PatJr on April 30, 2024, 04:38:57 PM
it looks to me like everything gets put into a separate frame and the musical notes are combinations of characters
preserving the text in an editable, searchable form looks like it will be very very difficult and time-consuming

idea, import the music parts as vectors and the cut and past from your MuseScore program for the text?
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: santiclear on May 01, 2024, 02:04:49 AM
I wrote all the lyrics in MuseScore so that I would'nt have to do more editing in a separate program. One of the basic principles behind it was 1 page = 1 (or more) songs, sometimes 1 spread = 1 song. No page turning during performances. All those files have been written in a couple of years (which means that it would be quite time consuming to remove and then rewrite and redo the layout for all the lyrics), and were used and printed individually.

All I really wanted to do was put together the individual sheets, combine 2 or 3 songs on the same page where this is possible, number them and add introductions and indexes.
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: Aleks100 on May 01, 2024, 03:30:57 PM
Pdf is container for everything (and anything).
Have you tried to export in svg format, or even png in high resolution - grayscale 450dpi for example?
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: Nermander on May 02, 2024, 04:47:51 PM
Quote from: santiclear on April 29, 2024, 11:18:15 PMWhat am I doing wrong?

If I am not wrong, a PDF can be added to a Scribus document in different ways. Did you try to import the PDF into an image frame?

Because I think otherwise the contents of the PDF is imported as individual objects.

But I am not sure if importing it to an image frame causes it to be rasterized.
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: PatJr on May 02, 2024, 10:17:33 PM
Quote from: Nermander on May 02, 2024, 04:47:51 PM
Quote from: santiclear on April 29, 2024, 11:18:15 PMWhat am I doing wrong?

If I am not wrong, a PDF can be added to a Scribus document in different ways. Did you try to import the PDF into an image frame?

Because I think otherwise the contents of the PDF is imported as individual objects.

But I am not sure if importing it to an image frame causes it to be rasterized.

I tried it, the pdf imported/opened as a vector graphic. I looked OK but all the text was outlined and you couldn't used a text search on it. I think that's the end goal here for the op, text searching the exported pdf after it's assembled in scribus.
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: Aleks100 on May 02, 2024, 10:29:24 PM
For start in "A5 Venite fedeli (Stefani-Wade) (accordi).pdf" colors are wrong.
They should be 100% Black - they are 300% mixture of CMYK.
In booklet every page with notes have same mistake.
Pages made in Scribus are fine, 100% Black as they should be.

Does all text have to be searchable?

Below is pdf converted to grayscale
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: santiclear on May 06, 2024, 10:47:56 PM
Quote from: Aleks100 on May 02, 2024, 10:29:24 PMFor start in "A5 Venite fedeli (Stefani-Wade) (accordi).pdf" colors are wrong.
They should be 100% Black - they are 300% mixture of CMYK.
In booklet every page with notes have same mistake.
Pages made in Scribus are fine, 100% Black as they should be.

Does all text have to be searchable?

Below is pdf converted to grayscale
I had not noticed that. In fact, all the PDF output from Musescore has registration black instead of K black.  :'(

Hi-res pngs work fine, of course (they are large); have still not tried what Scribus does with MuseScore's SVGs, which are quite heavy as well.
Unfortunately, these are all workarounds which do not allow me to keep text searchable.
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: Aleks100 on May 11, 2024, 09:01:08 AM
Not registration black - 4x100% ink.
It is a rich black for extra black offset printing.
I have also tried to import individual pdfs as curves (loosing all text) in Scribus and it looks fine, but I have not tested it in Acrobat.
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: santiclear on May 14, 2024, 11:39:48 AM
Isn't registration the sum of 100% inks that can be used (in this case C100%+ M100% + Y100% + K100% ?)
In any case, do you think I should report this to the MuseScore developers? In my opinion it should be treated merely as K100%, just as typical black text from word processing /desktop publishing software. But again, I am no expert in printing processes, so feel free to correct me.

As for my initial question, I seem to understand that there is no straightforward solution to my problem - I can achieve what I need only with workarounds, at the expense of file size and/or searchable text, correct?
Title: Re: Making a book with PDF music and lyrics - workflow questions & file size trouble
Post by: Nermander on May 14, 2024, 04:43:18 PM
Yes, registration black is usually 100% of all 4 colors, because you want the registration marks to show on all 4 plates. That is kind of the whole point of the registration marks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_registration