Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
At 03:28 PM 7/19/2007 +0200, you wrote:
massive amounts of custom lines with noteheads as arrows
How do you turn the darn fonts 90 degrees in shape designer? Or do you have
some other trick for using notes as arrowheads? Like a custom font?
This is really kludgy, but I think there are 2 ways to turn fonts 90
degrees. Neither are all that much fun.
1. Put the text into a Smart Shape Custom Line (or lines) without any
line and then drag the thing vertically.
2. Paste a graphic that is actually an encapsulated postscript file
that contains the instructions to turn the included text 90 degrees
or any other angle for that matter. Below are two examples of that
kind of instruction from 1998. (Finale 97!)
I just tested this out again and it still works. The problem with
pasted eps graphics is that you can't see exactly where the contents
are pasted, you just get this white box that says the name of the
file pasted in. Is there a way around this?
Also, making a pdf of the Finale file didn't get the graphic to
print, but saving as a postscript file did.
-Randolph Peters
Save the following as a text file and it will be seen as a postscript
file when you paste as a graphic. (The text says (Muted) by the way.)
%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 20 270
/Palatino-Bold findfont
14 scalefont
setfont
16 0 moveto
90 rotate
(Muted) show
showpage
************************
Here is a three line text turned 90 degrees.
%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 60 320
/Palatino-Bold findfont
12 scalefont
setfont
16 0 moveto
90 rotate
(Stand on your heads and whistle Dixie!) show
40 -32 moveto
(Then stand up and do the) show
0 -48 moveto
("Monkey No See, No Hear, No Speak" routine. ) show
showpage
************************************
For further information, here is the only explanatory note that I could find:
} Philip Aker's code is (almost) correct as a bit of independent
} encapsulated Postscript, and it does work for me (Win95,
} Fin97c). (In fact it doesn't need the last 'showpage' line -
} that command prints the physical page, and Finale does that for
} you.)
I included the 'showpage' operator because of the dual purpose
of the example presented - it was to print as a standalone file
to a PostScript printer as well. While it's true, as you note
that technically speaking EPS files should not have the
showpage operator included, by way of defensive programming,
most, if not all, modern graphics applications will simply
ignore the statement in embedded EPS objects. Finale is one of
them. The reason why it might have to be included is that some
printers and older applications on DOS and Windows platforms
erroneously require the operator to get the file to print. You
might remember from quite sometime ago a discussion about
Finale's handling of PostScript on Windows where it turned out
that the printer was expecting the files to have linebreaks
marked with CRLF where Finale was correctly generating the
single LF control character in .ps files.
} What Philip didn't make particularly clear is that you import
} this file as a graphic into Finale. Don't try to integrate it
} into Finale's Postscript output - that definitely won't work.
Here's what I wrote:
First clip out the example, save it to a text file and then
place it as a graphic in Finale. You could also download it to
a PostScript printer.
Sure wish I had the ability to be 'particularly clear'. It's
been pointed out to me on several occasions that I do tend to
be somewhat terse when explaining things.... I'll try to put
on the 'verbose' flag for future explanations.
ps:
Subject: Vertical Text
Several people have enquired about explaining the PostScript
example posted to the list a few days ago.
Feel free to add to or correct the explanation below, Post some
of your own examples (like a slick arrowhead procedure) so
others can use them. I've tried to make the explanation as
simple as possible so people unfamiliar with PostScript can
take advantage of its basic features.
*****
First clip out the example, save it to a text file and then
place it as a graphic in Finale. You could also download it to
a PostScript printer.
Our reference:
} %!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
} %%BoundingBox: 0 0 20 270
}
} /Times-Bold findfont
} 16 scalefont
} setfont
} 16 0 moveto
} 90 rotate
} (Stand on your heads and whistle Dixie!) show
} showpage
Comments:
========
%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
A postscript text file always starts with "%!...". This is so
the PostScript interpreter in the printer's ROM knows that it's
getting something it can deal with after receiving only a few
characters. The rest is just the type of file and the version
of PostScript that is being used.
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 20 270
This tells the printer (or the application importing an EPS
file) what the 'page' size is. The '0' '0' part is the origin
of the page. Always leave the origin at 0. You can think
Cartesian coordinates for PostScript. The '20' is the width of
the 'page' (it's the horizontal coordinate direction). The
'270' is the height (the vertical coordinate). The measurements
are in points (or fraction thereof).
/Times-Bold findfont
Call up a font by its PostScript name. You should be able to
double check this in Fontographer. The slash is required before
the name.
PostScript is an RPN language (Reverse Polish Notation). All
the data that a particular operator requires is stated first,
and then the operator name appears. When the PostScript engine
sees an operator (in this case 'findfont') it takes it as a
signal to stop receiving data and perform the action that the
operator specifies.
16 scalefont
Set the point size of the font
setfont
Finalize all of the preceeding font information into a slot in
what is called a 'dictionary'. Now the PostScript engine knows
all it needs to know about that particular font and has it
ready to be called into action.
16 0 moveto
Now we're going to draw some stuff. In this case it's a chunk
of text. Before we put the virtual pen to the virtual page
however, we have to know where to start. I arbitrarily set the
font size to 16 points. I wanted to leave a little border
around the text so that's the reason the width of the page was
set to 20 points. I just guessed about how much the length of
the text would be, printed one copy and then adjusted the
vertical size of the 'page' to be a little closer to the end of
the text.
So now I write the instruction to move the pen to horizontal
coordinate 16 and vertical coordinate 0.
90 rotate
Here's the item which specifies the rotation angle in degrees.
PostScript's angles are measured counter-clockwise from 3
o'clock. So from 9 o'clock to three o'clock is the horizontal
plane, and from 6 o'clock to 12 o'clock is the vertical plane
(positive directions). An item which lies in the horizontal
plane has a rotation of 0 degrees - and it's not necessary to
specify it for normal text.
(Stand on your heads and whistle Dixie!) show
Any text you wish to draw is enclosed in parentheses. Any item
in PostScript is always drawn invisibly at first, so the 'show'
operator tells the engine to now render it. We haven't told it
to do anything fancy with the pen so it is going to draw in
black.
showpage
Now print the thing. Printing to a printer or printing to the
screen are the same thing to PostScript. It's platform
independent and device independent. Marvellous!
Lastly, there was a question about running vertical text for
several lines. In that case just start the second and
succeeding sentences at a displacement equal to the font size
and repeat the process. You will also have to adjust the size
of the bounding box for the extra width.
%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 60 320
/Times-Bold findfont
16 scalefont
setfont
16 0 moveto
90 rotate
(Stand on your heads and whistle Dixie!) show
40 -32 moveto
(Then stand up and do the) show
0 -48 moveto
("Monkey No See, No Hear, No Speak" routine. ) show
showpage
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