I’m writing a music theory textbook. Each page is about half text, 1-2 paragraphs, and one or two musical examples that vary from a single staff to 4-6 staves. On the previous draft of this, I did the text in MS Word and the music in Finale, took screenshots of the music, and pasted it into Word. Word was necessary because I needed to use its indexing, spell-check, and formatting capabilities which were way beyond what Finale could do. When done, I exported from Word into PDF for printing.
I’m picking up the project now and obviously can’t use Finale anymore. What is the best practice for a project like this? Assuming I still need to use Word for the text, what is the most efficient manner for getting music into Word? What will print the cleanest and look professional? Am I wrong in my assumption that a project this text-heavy won’t be efficient in Dorico? Thanks for all suggestions!
I should add that’ I’ve gotten pretty handy with Dorico since converting, so I can handle all the music creation, staff formatting, and such.
To have the best quality is suggested to use PDF or SVG file format to export (since they are vector graphics, they are scalable without quality loss)
It I suggested to make such text intensive projects in a separate program (as Word or In Design). But just to see Dorico’s possibilities, it would be interesting if you could upload a couple of pages of your book, for us to give advices on possible alternative strategies (just inside Dorico).
InDesign is a great tool, but it has a steep learning curve. If you’re a new user, be forewarned.
Word honestly works ok for modest projects. You can make paragraph styles, headers, footnotes… I find many users do not come close to exhausting Word’s capabilities. Of course it’s not a true DTP program.
I don’t like SVGs in this case because Dorico doesn’t embed fonts when it exports them. PDFs are far more reliable in that regard. Newer versions of Word should do just fine with PDFs.
Dan, could you please explain the significance of this, thanks.
Is the text then just paths, if so, then they should show clearly at various resolutions, or are you meaning you cannot then edit (the text) at the other end?
And PDFs, in the olde days, we used .eps etc. but it works with PDF just as well now? as small graphics, the PDF file format being just a container so to speak for a graphic + just those font characters embedded (but not whole font?)
I misspoke. What I meant was “Dorico doesn’t convert to curves (or paths).” That’s the only way to guarantee that the SVG will look the same everywhere. It’s not editable, but it’s a “perfect” vectored image. As it is presently, it is dependent on system fonts and things. One computer will render it differently from another.
I don’t understand all the underlying technical details, but that’s the essence.
Thanks for the clarification.
What is the svg from Dorico then if it does not export curves (if I read your sentence correctly.)
And PDF from Dorico is editable, has curves and font characters and can be resized?
I’m just trying to understand the differences so I can decide which to use, I think in the past you have recommended PDF, which I presume acts like any other graphic format where you can resize and place on a layout page (I have never tried PDF, but am familiar with the usual png, svg, tiff where you do this for a publication layout, it functions in the same way?)
An SVG is a text reference: it says “place this text in this spot with these properties and this font.” But it doesn’t work well in a webpage, or anywhere that that font is not present.
I would never recommend editing the output itself. Always edit the Dorico source file and re-export.
