Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[Frank Nordberg]

John Chambers wrote:
> 
> Hmmm ...  I see I wasn't specific enough.  With  JPEG,  GIF  and  PNG
> files, you can include them *inside* a page with a tag like:
>   http://foo.bar.com/junk.gif"; alt="pretty picture">
> This  will  cause  the image to be displayed as part of the web page,
> surrounded by text.
> 
> Does this work for .ps, .eps or .pdf files with these  browsers?

No it doesn't. You can actually fake it using the  function,
but it's rarely a good idea.


Frank Nordberg
http://www.musicaviva.com

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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[John Chambers]

John McChesney-Youngwrites:
| John Chambers asked about Macs:
| >Does the browser actually display the PDF?   Or  does  it  pop  up  a
| >separate  window  for the PDF?
|
| On my machine Communicator 4.79 displays the .pdf in the browser window.
| Unlike most other plug-ins, PDFViewer starts the full application (Acrobat
| Reader) as well, but the .pdf files actually show in the browser, with the
| cryptic little AR navigational buttons inside the window underneath those
| of the browser. The same is true for IE 5.0 and iCab 2.8.

Hmmm ...  I see I wasn't specific enough.  With  JPEG,  GIF  and  PNG
files, you can include them *inside* a page with a tag like:
  http://foo.bar.com/junk.gif"; alt="pretty picture">
This  will  cause  the image to be displayed as part of the web page,
surrounded by text.

Does this work for .ps, .eps or .pdf files with these  browsers?   It
sounds  like  what you're describing is something that handles a link
like:
  http://foo.bar.com/junk.pdf";>pretty picture
This will NOT be displayed as part of  the  text;  it  will  only  be
displayed  as  a  separate  "page" after the user clicks on the link.
Whether this is in  a  new  window,  or  replaces  the  text  in  the
browser's window, it doesn't work for the things I was describing. It
isn't an image inside a web page; it's an image in a separate window.

For example, if you look at:
  http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/doc/ABCtut_Intro.html
you will see a number of GIF and  PNG  images  of  musical  examples.
These  would  be  better  done  as  EPS, since that would give better
images on  larger  screens  (and  wouldn't  be  too  wide  for  small
screens).   But  as far as I know, you can't do this because browsers
won't display EPS images inside a page like this.

(Hmmm ... Maybe I should include an EPS version here, just for yuks.)

It would be especially useful if a browsers could handle embedded EPS
documents,  which  are  intended  to  be  displayed  inside  a larger
document.  (The 'E' stands for "Embedded".) I've tried  this  in  the
past,  and it never worked with any browsers I could get my hands on.
I've read comments that this was something intended in  the  original
(Mosaic)  browser back around 1990.  But it went commercial too soon;
Netscape and Microsoft never saw fit to implement EPS, so nobody else
has, either.

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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[John McChesney-Young]

John Chambers asked about Macs:

>Does the browser actually display the PDF?   Or  does  it  pop  up  a
>separate  window  for the PDF?

On my machine Communicator 4.79 displays the .pdf in the browser window.
Unlike most other plug-ins, PDFViewer starts the full application (Acrobat
Reader) as well, but the .pdf files actually show in the browser, with the
cryptic little AR navigational buttons inside the window underneath those
of the browser. The same is true for IE 5.0 and iCab 2.8. My Opera 5.0
doesn't know how to open them, but I didn't experiment too much with
fiddling with it to try to get it to replicate the other three.

Macs and most unix/linux systems now come with PS and
>PDF  readers,  and  their  browsers are pre-configured to fire up the
>appropriate helpers.

I can only speak for my own computer (an early iMac, rev2), but none of my
four browsers open a PS file and either offer different options for what to
do with it (choose app or plug-in or download)  or simply download it. I
didn't try all possible apps for opening the sample I downloaded from the
Tunefinder, but the handful of what seemed the likeliest didn't work -
unless one counts the QuickTime MoviePlayer's "slide show" of the code,
line by line; interesting after a fashion for someone with as low an
interest threshold as myself but not very musically enlightening.

I've thought of downloading a PS viewer just on general principles, but
since I haven't ever needed one I haven't gone to the trouble.

John

***
John McChesney-Young  ** [EMAIL PROTECTED] **  Berkeley, California, USA


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Re: [abcusers] antialiasing and test on ps files

[Jack Campin]

> My site, Musica Viva, includes more than 500 PDFs and a few thousand
> ABCs, but GIF is still the main format for sheet music on the site.
> There are a number of reasons for this:

>  d) Viewable on any computer - Ever tried to open a really big PDF file
> on a old computer?

Isn't a Mac SE/30 old and isn't an Apple service manual big?  No problem
there.  The screen rather than the computer is usually the limiting
factor; my usual monitor is an A3 greyscale, ideal for viewing PDFs,
currently attached to an LC475.  It doesn't feel a lot different to a
functionally identical screen attached to an SE/30.


>  k) I'm a professional - In an ideal world I would have been able to
> make a living giving people music to play, but this world is far
> from ideal. That by site actually costs me a lot of money!

What he said.  Some of the requests I get from Internet freeloaders
oughta be bronzed.  My favourites are the ones who think I ought to
spend a whole lot of money on document authoring software or server
database integration so as to give information away for free in a way
that suits them better.

===  ===


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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[John Chambers]

| > Wouldn't it be useful if browsers would display PS and PDF?  As far
| > as I can tell, the reason they don't is that PS and PDF are patented
| > formats owned by Adobe.
|
| The one I normally use does display PDF; Netscape 4.08 for the Mac
| with the PDFViewer plug-in.

Does the browser actually display the PDF?   Or  does  it  pop  up  a
separate  window  for the PDF?  The difference isn't inconsequential.
One way that I use GIF/PNG files is to incorporate samples  of  music
into a document. This doesn't work with PS or PDF. Instead of showing
the music at the point in the  document,  you  get  the  music  in  a
separate  window,  with  no  clue  relating  it to what should be the
adjacent text that is now in a separate window.

| I thought all browsers did that?  I don't recall ever encountering
| a problem viewing a PDF on either a Mac or a PC since they first
| started appearing on sites I look at.

Most of the questions I've gotten about PS and PDF are  from  Windows
users  who  can't  figure out how to get their browser to do anything
sane with them. Macs and most unix/linux systems now come with PS and
PDF  readers,  and  their  browsers are pre-configured to fire up the
appropriate helpers.  MS systems still don't seem to come set  up  to
handle PS, though some do know how to handle PDF now.

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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[Jack Campin]

> Wouldn't it be useful if browsers would display PS and PDF?  As far
> as I can tell, the reason they don't is that PS and PDF are patented
> formats owned by Adobe.

The one I normally use does display PDF; Netscape 4.08 for the Mac
with the PDFViewer plug-in.

I thought all browsers did that?  I don't recall ever encountering
a problem viewing a PDF on either a Mac or a PC since they first
started appearing on sites I look at.

Netscape also managed automagically to tell me where to get the plug-in
from and download it for me.  If a browser that old can do it, surely
most can.

===  ===


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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[Rick Davis]

Laura Conrad wrote:

> > "Rick" == Rick Davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> Rick> For Linux, the latest Netscape I could get (the last time I
> Rick> checked) was 4.51 or something like that, and I don't think
> Rick> it does PNG yet.
>
> I think it does; I think all Netscape 4.x does png.  I'm
> running 4.73, and it certainly does.

Hmm.  I 'll have to try it again.

Thanks.

Rick

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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[Laura Conrad]

> "Rick" == Rick Davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Rick> For Linux, the latest Netscape I could get (the last time I
Rick> checked) was 4.51 or something like that, and I don't think
Rick> it does PNG yet.  

I think it does; I think all Netscape 4.x does png.  I'm
running 4.73, and it certainly does.

-- 
Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ )
(617) 661-8097  fax: (801) 365-6574 
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139

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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[Rick Davis]

Richard Robinson wrote:

> > >  The newer
> > > PNG format is just as good, and free, but not yet as popular.
> >
> > Why? For exactly one reason: browsers (the big one esp) were not
> > supporting png until recently. And since one must expect quite a few
> > users to still be using their 4.0 or 5.0 browsers it's still not "safe" to
> > use png on web pages. Sad, since png is superior to gif in all ways
>
> Yes. I thought of switching the images in my "Tunebook" over to png a
> couple of years ago, but a little bit of checking and asking around
> convinced me that there were just too many browsers that wouldn't do it.
> Newer versions might, but that doesn't mean older ones have disappeared.

For Linux, the latest Netscape I could get (the last time I checked) was 4.51 or
something like that, and I don't think it does PNG yet.  And on my laptop, on which I 
run
Windoze 98, I got a later version of Netscape and hated what they'd done to it, so I
still use a 4.xx version there, too.

Rick


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Re: [abcusers] antialiasing and test on ps files

[Phil Taylor]

I wrote:

>Eric wrote:
>>If you want to have a look, I've copied the test files here :
>>
>>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.gif and
>>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.pdf
>>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.ps
>>
>
>This seems to make my point exactly.  I've put up a picture containing
>screen captures of princess.gif (captured from my browser) and princess.pdf
>(captured from Acrobat Reader 4.0) so you can see the results on my screen.
>The top picture is the gif.  The pdf is actually rather better than
>average (only the text seems to be antialiassed here), but is still clearly
>inferior in quality to the gif.
>
>See
>http://www.barfly.dial.pipex.com/princess.gif

Perhaps I should say that the results are quite different when printed on
a Postscript printer.  I printed all three files out on my HP 6MP Laserjet
(600 dpi postscript laser printer - old and slow, but very good quality).

The gif was good quality (just like the screen picture).

The pdf was perfect.

The postscript would have been perfect if the printer had had the correct font
for the title and composer.  As it was, it substituted Courier font, which
looks a bit naff.

Conclusions
If you know that the recipient wants to print out the music, and has a
postscript printer, and the file size is irrelevant, then pdf is the best
choice.  Under all other circumstances gif is better.

Phil Taylor


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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[Richard Robinson]

On Sat, 15 Jun 2002, Atte Andre Jensen wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, Phil Taylor wrote:
> > John Chambers wrote:
> > >GIF is only used because browsers understand it.
> >
> > No, it's used because it's the most efficient way of compressing a
> > black and white (or 256 colour) picture into a small file.
> 
> True in low resolution files, but not in print quality.

Yes, that's the big advantage of vector formats, they don't count the
dots, so they don't scale up the same way. Necessarily. Though I have seen
postscript which appears to contain embedded bitmaps ...

Browsers, of course, are mainly dealing natively with low-res images. 
Which works well in our context - gif for screen images of tunes, and abc
for printing. 

> >  The newer
> > PNG format is just as good, and free, but not yet as popular.
> 
> Why? For exactly one reason: browsers (the big one esp) were not
> supporting png until recently. And since one must expect quite a few
> users to still be using their 4.0 or 5.0 browsers it's still not "safe" to
> use png on web pages. Sad, since png is superior to gif in all ways

Yes. I thought of switching the images in my "Tunebook" over to png a
couple of years ago, but a little bit of checking and asking around
convinced me that there were just too many browsers that wouldn't do it.
Newer versions might, but that doesn't mean older ones have disappeared.

When does the Unisys LZW patent run out, anyway ? It can't be long now,
surely ? 

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem


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Re: [abcusers] antialiasing and test on ps files

[Frank Nordberg]

Forgeot Eric wrote:
> 
> I don't really agree, even if you're right in some extends :
> A gif file (I mean a partition) that looks cool on a browser with
> 16 colours is ci. 9 ko. The same in ps is 29 ko, but converted in
> pdf it's only 11 ko (I've tried for a small tune).

Well, yes and no, Eric. The difference in size between a gif and a pdf
file isn't nealy as big as some people belive, but there is a difference.

Ghostview seems to create fairly large gifs. The equivalent
BarFly/Graphic Converter output is only half the size. A Musica Viva
style GIF would be even smaller.

As for Postscript files - it's not unusual for a file created by one
application to be four or five times as large as a similar file created
by a different application. This difference is mostly, but not
completely, evened out when the file is converted to pdf.

(Of course, if file size is the *only* issue, you should just post the
abc. In this particular case, you only need 806 bytes for that.)

---

My site, Musica Viva, includes more than 500 PDFs and a few thousand
ABCs, but GIF is still the main format for sheet music on the site.
There are a number of reasons for this:

  a) Old habit - When I started the site, PDF simply wasn't a serious alternative.

  b) File size - The difference between a single PDF and a single GIF
might not be
 so big, but how about 8000+ of them? I already use more than 200 of
the 50 MBs
 I have available, so I have to be very careful to make evetyrhing
as compact
 as possible.

  c) Viewable on any browser - I happen to be a firm supporter of the anybrowser
 campaign ( http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/ ). GIF is by far the format
 that comes closest to that ideal.

  d) Viewable on any computer - Ever tried to open a really big PDF file
on a
 old computer?

  e) Flexibility - Unlike PDFs, GIFs can be embedded in a html page,
opening up
 a large nuber of options (to many to list here).

  f) Reliability - GIFs are far more rugged than PDFs. I don't have to
worry about
 broken files, and I don't have to worry about people being unable
to read
 the file because of some stupid software incompaibility.

  g) Speed - GIFs load faster than PDFs even if they're the same size.

  h) No plug-ins required - Let's face it, there are lots of computers
that don't
 have Acrobat Reader installed. There are lots of users who have no idea
 what to do about it. There even are lots of older computers that simply
 don't have enough muscle to run such a heavy porgram.

  i) Security - The way I've set up Musica Viva makes it hard for people to
 steal the content of the site.

  j) It's good enough - The GIFs at Musica Viva are good enough for everyday
 use. You can read the sheet music, and you can play from it. What more
 do you expect for free?

  k) I'm a professional - In an ideal world I would have been able to
make a
 living giving people music to play, but this world is far from
ideal. That
 by site actually costs me a lot of money!
 I give away the basics for free just because I like to think of myself
 as a nice peson. But if you want more than that from me, I want to see
 some cash from you. If you *demand* more than that, you've got a serious
 attitude problem.


Frank Nordberg
http://www.musicaviva.com
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Re: [abcusers] antialiasing and test on ps files

[Phil Taylor]

Eric wrote:
>If you want to have a look, I've copied the test files here :
>
>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.gif and
>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.pdf
>http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.ps
>

This seems to make my point exactly.  I've put up a picture containing
screen captures of princess.gif (captured from my browser) and princess.pdf
(captured from Acrobat Reader 4.0) so you can see the results on my screen.
The top picture is the gif.  The pdf is actually rather better than
average (only the text seems to be antialiassed here), but is still clearly
inferior in quality to the gif.

See
http://www.barfly.dial.pipex.com/princess.gif

Phil Taylor


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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[Atte Andre Jensen]

On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, Phil Taylor wrote:

> John Chambers wrote:
> >GIF is only used because browsers understand it.
>
> No, it's used because it's the most efficient way of compressing a
> black and white (or 256 colour) picture into a small file.

True in low resolution files, but not in print quality.

>  The newer
> PNG format is just as good, and free, but not yet as popular.

Why? For exactly one reason: browsers (the big one esp) were not
supporting png until recently. And since one must expect quite a few
users to still be using their 4.0 or 5.0 browsers it's still not "safe" to
use png on web pages. Sad, since png is superior to gif in all ways
-- 
love, peace & harmony
Atte

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[abcusers] antialiasing and test on ps files

[Forgeot Eric]

>pages because the file sizes are much larger and the download
times
>that much longer, and because the results on-screen are
unpredictable.

I don't really agree, even if you're right in some extends :
A gif file (I mean a partition) that looks cool on a browser with
16 colours is ci. 9 ko. The same in ps is 29 ko, but converted in
pdf it's only 11 ko (I've tried for a small tune). The difference
is that both ps and pdf will print good, the gif will be ugly if
printed. And it's not true to say there is an antialiasing problem
(at least it can be corrected). 

If you want to have a look, I've copied the test files here :

http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.gif and 
http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.pdf
http://anamnese.online.fr/lastened/princess.ps

To see what my antialiased ps files look like, princess.gif is
just a screen-copy of ghostview. I find it strange that most of
users complain about antialiasing with ghostview when the
antialiasing problem just comes from the lines : if the staff
lines are understood to be "quite thick", then ghostview will
"antialias" them and the results will be awfull (some lines will
be antialiased, some others not). Just change the thickness of the
staff lines, and only the notes will be antialiased and the
display nicer. For example, a ps generateed by abcm2pq will begun
such :

%%BeginSetup
/bdef {bind def} bind def
/T {translate} bdef
/M {moveto} bdef
/dlw {0.8 setlinewidth} bdef

 {0.8 setlinewidth} may be too large to display well (but it
prints better on laser printers), so if you edit by hand the ps
files, you can lower the value, to {0.7 setlinewidth} or less (it
displays well with 0.7 for me, at least with graphic alpha turned
to 2, not 4).
You can of course alter the source code of the program in order to
make this value the default (for example to compile 2 programs,
one to generate ps files for the screen, the other for the printer
etc.)




___
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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[Richard Robinson]

On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, John Chambers wrote:

> (Wouldn't it be useful if browsers would display PS and PDF?  As  far
> as  I can tell, the reason they don't is that PS and PDF are patented
> formats owned by Adobe. This ought not to matter, since it's legal to
> decode and display them. But it's easy to understand why people might
> be wary of doing something that has a high probability of getting  IP
> lawyers involved.  ;-)


Which is why we use GIF instead. Right. < *grin* >


> It depends on your screen, mostly. When I first tried GhostView on my
> home  machine,  it  was very nearly unreadable.  About half the staff
> lines and most of the note stems were weird multi-color  things  that
> didn't  look much like music at all.  It may have had something to do
> with my color settings. Of course, I had no clue why it was so awful.
> It   took  a  lot  of  experimenting  until  I  stumbled  across  the
> "antialias" setting, wondered what it was, flipped the  setting,  and
> saw some very nice music notation suddenly appear on the screen.

I hadn't realised this until you just mentioned it.


-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem


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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[Phil Taylor]

John Chambers wrote:
>Christophe writes:
>| I find PDF a good (if not perfect it's a lot better than GIF IMHO)
>| format for document exchange and I found useful to say that to help
>| users who want to exchange music with non abc litterate friends.
>
>Yeah; PDF (and PS) are a lot better than GIF or any other format that
>sends  the  scan lines.  PS and PDF draw lines and curves to the best
>resolution of the output device, so their quality is as good as  that
>device can produce.

Aint necessarily so.

When you export a GIF (or PNG, BMP, JPEG etc.) from a program which
displays music on the screen, what you get is exactly what is displayed
on screen.  If you send that to another user it will display on their
screen exactly as as it did on yours (maybe bigger or smaller if their
screen resolution is different, but with no distortion of the symbols).
If that user prints it out it will look the same as it does on screen:
OK, but not great, since it won't take advantage of the higher printer
resolution and won't look as crisp as you might expect.

When you export a Postscript file, or the PDF made from it, what you get
is the information which would be sent to a Postscript printer.  Send
that to another user and the results on screen are quite unpredictable,
depending on the software and settings used, the screen resolution
and colour depth etc.  The results will vary from almost unreadable
to OK, but not great.  The same applies if that user prints it on a
non-postscript printer.  If she prints it on a postscript printer the
results will always be excellent.

So "ps good, gif bad" is quite wrong.  It depends what they are going
to be used for.  Gif is safer, since it will always look the same as
it does to the sender, and will never be illegible.  PS (or PDF) can
give much higher quality under certain specific conditions, but can
also produce atrocious results when those conditions don't apply.

>GIF is only used because browsers understand it.

No, it's used because it's the most efficient way of compressing a
black and white (or 256 colour) picture into a small file.  The newer
PNG format is just as good, and free, but not yet as popular.  JPEG
is better for full-colour pictures and BMP is uncompressed, so yields
unnecessarily huge files.

>(Wouldn't it be useful if browsers would display PS and PDF?  As  far
>as  I can tell, the reason they don't is that PS and PDF are patented
>formats owned by Adobe. This ought not to matter, since it's legal to
>decode and display them. But it's easy to understand why people might
>be wary of doing something that has a high probability of getting  IP
>lawyers involved.  ;-)

It would be useful, but these would not replace gif or png in web
pages because the file sizes are much larger and the download times
that much longer, and because the results on-screen are unpredictable.


>| So I thought it could be useful to tell them to turn off antialiasing
>| (for example, with GSVIEW 4.* on a Windows box, go to the Media/Display
>| settings menu and set the Graphics Alpha to 1 bit).

Ho ho!  How is the naive user expected to understand the connection
between Graphics Alpha and antialiasing?

>With the version for unix/linus systems, it's the "State" menu, which
>has an "antialias" item.
>
>It's easy,  once  you  know  about  it.   But  I've  never  seen  any
>documentation on this, though I have dug around in the GV and GS docs
>quite a bit to learn about some other things.
>
>It's a bit odd that this would be on by default.  It also messes up a
>lot of text, though the damage isn't as bad as with music.  As far as
>I can tell, antialiasing is only useful with  images,  and  not  with
>very many of them.  So by default antialiasing should be off.

Antialiasing has it's uses.  Perhaps I should explain what it does, for
the benefit of the less-well informed.

When a computer is instructed to draw a line from position x1y1 to
position x2y2 on a display device, it must translate that information
into a row of coloured pixels.  If the line is horizontal or vertical,
the result looks like a clean line, as all the coloured pixels are
adjacent.  If the line is diagonal, the result will be a staircase,
which doesn't look so good.  If the instruction was not just for
a simple line, but for a pattern such as five equally-spaced horizontal
lines whose spacing is different from that of the screen pixels, some
distortion is inevitable, resulting in the lines being drawn different
distances apart.  The distortion is called aliasing because it's
exactly analagous to the aliasing which happens in audio when you
play two closely related frequencies together.

Graphics antialiasing is achieved by filling in the pixels which would
be partially included in the lines with shades of grey.  The staircase
effect on diagonal lines disappears because the steps have been filled
in with grey pixels, and the eye sees this as a smooth continuous line
(unless you use a magnifying glass to see how it's don

Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[John Chambers]

Christophe writes:
| I find PDF a good (if not perfect it's a lot better than GIF IMHO)
| format for document exchange and I found useful to say that to help
| users who want to exchange music with non abc litterate friends.

Yeah; PDF (and PS) are a lot better than GIF or any other format that
sends  the  scan lines.  PS and PDF draw lines and curves to the best
resolution of the output device, so their quality is as good as  that
device can produce.  GIF is only used because browsers understand it.

(Wouldn't it be useful if browsers would display PS and PDF?  As  far
as  I can tell, the reason they don't is that PS and PDF are patented
formats owned by Adobe. This ought not to matter, since it's legal to
decode and display them. But it's easy to understand why people might
be wary of doing something that has a high probability of getting  IP
lawyers involved.  ;-)

| Saying that PDF files coming from the *abc*2ps/GhostScript road are
| unreadable seems a little too much for me.

It depends on your screen, mostly. When I first tried GhostView on my
home  machine,  it  was very nearly unreadable.  About half the staff
lines and most of the note stems were weird multi-color  things  that
didn't  look much like music at all.  It may have had something to do
with my color settings. Of course, I had no clue why it was so awful.
It   took  a  lot  of  experimenting  until  I  stumbled  across  the
"antialias" setting, wondered what it was, flipped the  setting,  and
saw some very nice music notation suddenly appear on the screen.

| So I thought it could be useful to tell them to turn off antialiasing
| (for example, with GSVIEW 4.* on a Windows box, go to the Media/Display
| settings menu and set the Graphics Alpha to 1 bit).

With the version for unix/linus systems, it's the "State" menu, which
has an "antialias" item.

It's easy,  once  you  know  about  it.   But  I've  never  seen  any
documentation on this, though I have dug around in the GV and GS docs
quite a bit to learn about some other things.

It's a bit odd that this would be on by default.  It also messes up a
lot of text, though the damage isn't as bad as with music.  As far as
I can tell, antialiasing is only useful with  images,  and  not  with
very many of them.  So by default antialiasing should be off.

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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[John Chambers]

Rick writes:
| Agreed.  Why else would one subscribe to this list than to read and benefit from 
|"long and useless comments"?  ;-)

 Paul Musgrave <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
|
| Well put, Mr. Chambers.  I for one appreciate your "long and useless comments."  
|Keep up the good work! Dave Musgrave McDade, Texas, USA

Heh. I was a bit apprehensive about being too harsh. But the fact is,
this  isn't  an  "abc-wizards" list.  It's "abcusers", and the naming
conventions imply that newbie-level discussions should be welcome.

One of the real problems with a lot of mailing lists  and  newsgroups
is  arrogant  "RTFM"  comments  from  the  more expert members of the
discussion.  Such remarks are intended to drive off  novices.   While
this is appropriate on a "wizards" list, it's quite out of place on a
"users" list.  We don't want to drive away our  new  users,  who  are
often  somewhat clueless.  This is especially true for a subject like
abc, which exists for musicians, not computer experts.

It is interesting that there have been several attempts to  start  up
abc  mailing  lists for more advanced users and developers, but these
haven't been very successful The developers especially seem  to  want
to  talk in the "users" forum and get feedback from musicians who are
not abc experts or developers.

This is generally a good sign. It keeps the programmers in touch with
the end users. But we do need to be on the watch for experts who will
insult and discourage novices.  They need to be told in no  uncertain
terms that this is not a forum for experts.

(And we all need to do a better job of keeping the Subject: line more
accurate.  ;-)

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RE: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[Christophe Declercq]

> De : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]De la part de
> John Chambers
> Envoyé : vendredi 14 juin 2002 15:25
> À : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Objet : Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing
>
>
> Christophe writes:
> | Antialiasing is a feature you can turn off both in GhostView and in
> | Acrobat Reader.
> |
> | Please learn to use the tools you discuss before writing long and
> | useless comments.
>
> Um, I think I'd strongly disagree with that.  To  paraphrase,  "First
> learn  to  use  the  abc  tools,  and  then  we'll asnwer your stupid
> questions about them."
>
> This is both facetious  and  insulting.

Sorry for that, John, if you take it like that.

I find PDF a good (if not perfect it's a lot better than GIF IMHO)
format for document exchange and I found useful to say that to help
users who want to exchange music with non abc litterate friends.

Saying that PDF files coming from the *abc*2ps/GhostScript road are
unreadable seems a little too much for me.

> Antialiasing is an especially awful subject.   Most  musicians  won't
> have  any clue what this means.  Even if they've seen the word in one
> of the menus in the app they're using, they won't suspect that it has
> anything  to  do  with  why  the  music  looks so awful.  If they are
> familiar with the term from audio context, they still probably  won't
> suspect  that  it's  related to their problem.

So I thought it could be useful to tell them to turn off antialiasing
(for example, with GSVIEW 4.* on a Windows box, go to the Media/Display
settings menu and set the Graphics Alpha to 1 bit).

Christophe




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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[jr_davis]

Agreed.  Why else would one subscribe to this list than to read and benefit from "long 
and useless comments"?  ;-)

Rick


On Fri, 14 Jun 2002 09:15:17 -0500 Paul Musgrave <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Well put, Mr. Chambers.  I for one appreciate your "long and useless comments."  Keep 
up the good work! Dave Musgrave McDade, Texas, USA


This is both facetious  and  insulting.   The  abcusers  list  exists
primarily  to  help  users.   These  are  mostly musicians who aren't
computer experts, but who are attempting to use abc notation. Telling
people  to  go  away  until  they've first found the answers to their
questions is arguing against the main value of this list. 

(Good stuff deleted)
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Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[Paul Musgrave]

Well put, Mr. Chambers.  I for one appreciate your "long and useless comments."  Keep up the good work! Dave Musgrave McDade, Texas, USA    This is both facetious  and  insulting.   The  abcusers  list  existsprimarily  to  help  users.   These  are  mostly musicians who aren'tcomputer experts, but who are attempting to use abc notation. Tellingpeople  to  go  away  until  they've first found the answers to theirquestions is arguing against the main value of this list. (Good stuff deleted)

Re: [abcusers] Antialiasing

[John Chambers]

Christophe writes:
| Antialiasing is a feature you can turn off both in GhostView and in
| Acrobat Reader.
|
| Please learn to use the tools you discuss before writing long and
| useless comments.

Um, I think I'd strongly disagree with that.  To  paraphrase,  "First
learn  to  use  the  abc  tools,  and  then  we'll asnwer your stupid
questions about them."

This is both facetious  and  insulting.   The  abcusers  list  exists
primarily  to  help  users.   These  are  mostly musicians who aren't
computer experts, but who are attempting to use abc notation. Telling
people  to  go  away  until  they've first found the answers to their
questions is arguing against the main value of this list.

Questions about viewers are especially relevant, both abc viewers and
viewers for formats like PS and PDF. Most abc users want it converted
to conventional staff notation.  So questions of the  form  "Why  the
hell does it come up so unreadable on my screen?" are quite relevant.
If you can't read what's on the  screen,  that  seriously  interferes
with your use of the software and the abc files.

Antialiasing is an especially awful subject.   Most  musicians  won't
have  any clue what this means.  Even if they've seen the word in one
of the menus in the app they're using, they won't suspect that it has
anything  to  do  with  why  the  music  looks so awful.  If they are
familiar with the term from audio context, they still probably  won't
suspect  that  it's  related to their problem.  The audio meaning has
very little to do with the usage in video.  The  disappearance  of  a
staff  line  because of "antialiasing" isn't due to a wrong frequency
appearing in the  output;  it's  a  case  of  something  disappearing
entirely.   It's  not really an aliasing problem at all.  But this is
what the PS/PDF viewers call it, so it's the word you've gotta use to
explain how to fix it.

OTOH, we could encourage people to correct the  subject  line.   This
branch  of  the  topic  has  veered  away from "Embro".  Keeping that
subject means that people who killfiled the topic have missed  a  new
topic that they might have found interesting. And people who killfile
the message because they know all about "antialiasing" will also miss
the "Embro" followups.

So rather than discouraging people from discussing a highly  relevant
topic  about  usability of abc tools, we should be harping on keeping
the subject line meaningful.  Then the people who don't want to waste
time on a subject can use their reader's "kill" facility.

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