Musejazz font issue
I'm having a problem with the Musejazz font. I'm using the Beta 1 (2.0) release on Windows XP. The problem is the effect of the default bold display of the Musejazz font on lowercase superscripted characters. They are hard to read unless I change the view to 200% zoom. They are also hard to read in the PDF export file (unless I zoom in, of course) and the printed output (Dadd11 is the one I'm currently wrestling with--the "add11" is not readable). Is there a non-bold version of this font available to replace the current default version? Though I've been able to change the bold font display on screen using the right-click-->Text Style and then deselecting the bold "a" under the font name near the top of the dialog box, this only changes the screen display of the font. It doesn't export to the PDF file and I suspect it won't print directly a non-bold version of the font (I haven't tried it yet to be sure). Anyway, that's my issue. Thanks in advance for your help!
Comments
There is only one version of the font, no separate bold & regular versions. It can of course be made bold in the text style / properties dialogs, but that isn't done using a separate version of the font; it's just some automatic thickening of the lines. So indeed, not a good idea to use bold MuseJazz for small print.
Not sure why you are seeing it set to bold, though, unelss you explicitly set it yourself. If I create a score from one of the Jazz templates, the chord symbol text style is set to MuseJazz 15pt regular. If you have it set to anything else, then presumably you set it that way yourself, and you should change it. Not sure what you mean about the bold setting not exporting to PDF - that works for me. Could you post the score you are having problems with?
FWIW, what you see can also depend on the size you have chosen. "add11" should look good and does to me at sizes of, say, 12 and greater. The font is not designed to be rendered small; one of the whole purposes of the font is to give you something that stands out, one that renders well large without taking too much space horizontally. "add" is actually a separate glyph in the font - it's not the letters "a", "d", and "d" individually, and was specifically created, I assume, to allow it to be rendered smaller and still be readable. I could change it to render that glyph larger, but again, it actually looks good to me at the intended sizes - not bold, of course - so I'd like to see your score to understand if there is a problem.
In reply to There is only one version of by Marc Sabatella
Marc, thanks for replying so quickly and thoroughly. The reason my Musejazz font was set to bold is that I had originally selected a different font (Minion Condensed) for my chord symbols and set it to 11 points bold. But then I realized that I didn't have the ability to superscript the lowercase characters. So, after researching the matter further by reading the Handbook, I switched to the Musejazz font. That's when I noticed that it was difficult to read the lowercase characters in the Musejazz chord names because I had forgotten to disable the bold setting in the Text Style dialog box. Disabling the bold setting made it easier to read the lowercase characters on screen but not in the PDF export file. For some reason, they still appeared bold there. So, after I submitted my issue to this forum and read your reply, I went back and changed the font size from 11 points to 15 points, as you suggested (it was still set at 11 points from before). That change made a huge difference in the Musejazz font's readability, of course, but it didn't eliminate its bolder appearance in the PDF export file. I have attached an image that illustrates the difference between the screen appearance of the Musejazz font in Musescore (left side) vs. the appearance of the Musejazz font in the PDF export file (right side). The font thickness difference also showed up when I printed a page from Musescore and Adobe Reader. Unfortunately, enlarging the font size introduced another problem: some of my chord names are now overlapping each other. While some of the overlapping can be corrected by offsetting the chord names horizontally, those with long names are problematic for various reasons. Finding a happy medium between these two extremes may work for this score, but what about others that I create in the future? I would prefer using a different font with less thickness in its character strokes but also with the ability to retain the superscripting of lowercase characters. Are there any others available besides Musejazz? -- Tom
In reply to Marc, thanks for replying so by muzikluver678
Your picture helps, and you are right - it looks bold in the PDF. I've seen this before, but not in 2.0 builds. Are you sure you are using a 2.0 build? Could you attach the score itself? Might be a Windows XP only issue or something like that, or it could be something abotu some other setting in your score (although what specifically, I can't really imagine).
Seeing your actual score would also help regarding the overlapping chords. 2.0 contains code to automatically space things out to prevent that, with adjustable parameters in Style / General / Chord Symbols to control how hard it tries. So unless you have manually moved chords around, you shouldn't be seeing overlap by default unless you have also played with those parameters. The one case where overlap can happen is if the last chord of a measure overlaps the barline into the next measure, so that's the only case where you should need to do manual adjustment. or play with the parameters in that dialog to keep the chord from overlapping the barline.
As for other fonts, there are probably some out there, but I don't know what they are. MuseJazz is the only one with direct support within MuseScore to fine tune the amount of superscripting etc. But other fonts might come already pre-superscripted a way you like. If so, it would mostly just be a matter of choosing it in the text style. In reality, though, it's more compelx than that. MuseScore does some special handing so that, for instance, the "9" in "C9" is not superscripted (much), but the "9" in "C7b9" is, and that is the sort of thing I mean when I say MuseJazz is the only font that is directly supported. If you really need to do that with another font, you could create a custom chord description file based on the one MuseScore uses for MuseJazz. It's not something I recommend if you can avoid it, though. If we can solve the bold PDF problem, hopefully MuseJazz can work for you.
In reply to Your picture helps, and you by Marc Sabatella
Okay, I'll upload two versions of my score. The first has an 11 point font and the second has a 15 point font. No overlaps in the first one, but numerous ones in the second. Yes, I did move a few of the chord names to make them more centered over the note heads (you can see this in the 11 point font), but not very many. I haven't yet published my score (though I did register it with the US copyright office), so please respect that. And, yes, I am using a 2.0 Musescore build (the Beta 1 release). I have Windows XP SP3 and I'm using Adobe Acrobat 9 Standard. I think there is an update available. If so, I wonder if installing it would resolve the bolder font display issue.
In reply to Okay, I'll upload two by muzikluver678
Marc, I tried setting the Musejazz font to 13 points, and none of the overlaps returned, though I did have to move two chord names slightly to the left. This size seems to be optimum for screen display and printing. PDF output is okay but not quite as good as I'd like it to be. I also noticed that the PDF export produces a slightly smaller font for the lyrics and measure numbers. Interesting, huh?
In reply to Okay, I'll upload two by muzikluver678
What overlaps are you concerned about in the 15pt version? All I see are a couple that are just as I said - long chords at the end of a measure that overlap the barline (and thus bump into the first chord of the next measure). You can tell MuseScore not to overlap chords so far with Style / General / Chord Symbols / Maximum barline distance. Kind of hard to explain exactly what it does, but the end result it controls the amount a chord is allowed to overlap the barline. Small values allow chord symbols to overlap the barline a lot; sufficiently large values allow it to overlap not at all (and thus creating otherwise unecessary space before the barline - that's the space you are actually controlling).
Normally, published music would normally have fewer mueasures per line than this and thus the problem woudn't come up except in very crowded situations with very long chords.
BTW, in the future, if you are concerned about people trolling to forums looking for music to steal, you could simply remove the lyrics, scramble the notes, whatever.
In reply to What overlaps are you by Marc Sabatella
There's also the last page on which the chord names overlap the lyrics from the staff above them. I checked and found that I have all the updates installed for my version of Acrobat and Distiller. Besides the overlap problem (which isn't too serious), the PDF export issue is the most bothersome to me, I guess. Do you think PDF Creator would do a better job? Thanks for the advice on protecting my music. I hadn't thought of that. My main concern with this song is the fact that it's not published yet (I'm looking for someone to professionally record it), not that someone might want to steal it, though I guess that may be something to be concerned about, too---or is it?
In reply to There's also the last page on by muzikluver678
Vertical collisions are another matter; simply increase space between staves and/or the lyric lower margin. Those settings are in Style / General / Page
Not sure what you mean about Acrobat, Distiller, or PDF Creator. Those shouldn't be involved. At least, not if you are letting MuseScore do the export - File / Export. But I guess they could be worth trying as a workaround.
And no, there really isn't anything to be concerned about posting unpublished music in a support forum.
In reply to Vertical collisions are by Marc Sabatella
Marc, my reason for mentioning PDF Creator as a possible workaround was based on the discussion of problems with the PDF Export in this thread: http://musescore.org/en/node/41956. For some reason, I was thinking that Musescore uses Adobe Distiller for its PDF Export, like I think Microsoft Publisher does for its Create Adobe PDF (though I could be wrong about this). So, because my version of Distiller and Adobe Acrobat (Reader) is somewhat old (9.5.5) I was thinking that an update (or upgrade) might correct this problem. But since I created a guitar chord page in Microsoft Publisher using the Musejazz font and then produced a PDF output, I'm now fairly certain that the problem lies in Musescore's PDF Export algorithm and/or libraries. The attached file is the basis for my assertion. Compare the Musejazz font displayed in Adobe Reader for pages 1-3 with that of page 4, which is from Microsoft Publisher.
In reply to Marc, my reason for by muzikluver678
One more thing I forgot to ask in my previous reply. The fretboard diagrams on page 4 of the PDF file that I attached are from TuxGuitar, a program I used to create the original score for my song (along with help from Microsoft Publisher) before I found out about Musescore. I noticed that Musescore only has one fretboard diagram (the one for the C chord). Are there plans to add more fretboard diagrams to Musescore? If not, how does someone (such as myself) do this and where would I get the fretboard diagrams? Is there some way to import or transfer the fretboard diagrams from TuxGuitar?
In reply to One more thing I forgot to by muzikluver678
right click on the fretboard diagram and select "Fretboard diagram properties". There you can modify the diagram. If you create your own workspace you can add a new palette and populate it with you collection of common diagrams.
In reply to Marc, my reason for by muzikluver678
MuseScore uses Qt's builtin PDF export and we're still waiting for the final fix of that in Qt-5.4.1.
Adobe's PDF printer is not up to the task at all...
In reply to MuseScore uses Qt's builtin by Jojo-Schmitz
Jojo, can you reproduce the bold MuseJazz issue using 5.4, and see if it is fixed in 5.4.1?
For me, I don't see MuseJazz coming out bold on my Windows machine. I see it looking like the other messed up fonts that we *know* is a problem with Qt - individual characters too small, but spaced as if they were normal size.
In reply to Jojo, can you reproduce the by Marc Sabatella
This one? Looks bold to me...
In reply to This one? Looks bold to me... by Jojo-Schmitz
And that's what you exported yourself? Using 5.4 or 5.4.1? For me, I see the other known PDF issue, which makes it hard to tell if it's bold or not.
In reply to And that's what you exported by Marc Sabatella
exported in the latest build using a Qt-5.4.1 pre-release
In reply to exported in the latest build by Jojo-Schmitz
Is MuseJazz ther only font that does this? Or, I guess to the point, there exist fonts that don't? How about FreeSerif and FreeSans?
Very possibly there is some simple flag I can set in the font metadata to prevent Qt from doing this.
In reply to Is MuseJazz ther only font by Marc Sabatella
Marc, Qt doesn't do a very good job with the FreeSerif font either. Take a look at the side by side comparison file I uploaded near the beginning of this thread. The FreeSerif font looks good on screen (left side) but not so good in the PDF file. Instead of being clear and crisp, it's kinda blurry and slightly smaller.
In reply to Marc, Qt doesn't do a very by muzikluver678
Good to know, but it's possible that issue at is fixed in the Qt 5.4.1 release we are anxiously awaiting. We know it fixes another very significant issues with PDF export on Windows.
In reply to MuseScore uses Qt's builtin by Jojo-Schmitz
Jojo, you said that "Adobe's PDF printer is not up to the task" of creating PDF files from Musescore, so I thought I'd try it anyway. After installing the Freeserif and Mscore fonts, I printed using Adobe PDF as the printer. I attached the output file, in which everything looks great (including the Musejazz font!) except for the lyrics, the measure numbers, the copyright notice, and the composer/lyricist text. Most of these letters and numbers are offset by one character. Is this the shortfall of the Adobe PDF printer that you were referring to?
In reply to Jojo, you said that "Adobe's by muzikluver678
Don't install those fonts, this will cause trouble later, when they get an update in MuseScore. And without them being installed, Adobe fails miserably.
Also this PDF now works on your computer only, as those fonts are note embedded in the PDF, see attachment
The alternative PDF printers don't have that issue...