Hello everyone, In the interests of bringing my typesettings into line with more up-to-date fonts, I've been experimenting a little with different slur packages. I used my guitar edition of BWV 995 as a test both of backwards compatibility and slur appearance/behaviour.
My software setup is MikTeX 2.1.8, GSView 3.3, Acrobat Reader 5.0. I created the PS files using DVIPS and the PDFs by converting PS files from within GSView. File sizes (in bytes): ===================== Bitmapped slurs: DVI 224188; PS 393575; PDF 489335 Kneifl slurs: DVI 410040; PS 545138; PDF 540902 Morimoto slurs: DVI 234700; PS 997311; PDF 614099 Backwards compatibility: ======================= Morimoto: no problems encountered Kneifl: slurs coded with MusixTeX beam slur macros do not terminate correctly (they seem to be treated like normal slurs) Appearance: ========== Both the Kneifl and Morimoto slurs are thinner than their bitmapped counterparts. The Morimoto slurs appear to have a shallower curvature than either the Kneifl or the bitmapped slurs. This can result in poorer legibility at certain curvatures, with slurs standing out less clearly against the staff lines. The Kneifl slurs appear to have a slightly stronger curvature than the bitmapped slurs. This improves the appearance of very short (solid) slurs, e.g. between semiquavers spaced close together and between grace notes and normal notes. The odd slur shape of some bitmapped slurs (depending on length and angle) is greatly improved in both Postscript versions. Dotted slurs: ============ Neither set of Postscript slurs is satisfactory here. My test score contains a large number of editorial, articulatory slurs between closely spaced semiquavers. Using the bitmapped slur fonts, even these short slurs are drawn with five segments separated by very narrow gaps. In contrast, however, both the Morimoto and the Kneifl slurs use larger slur segments and wider gaps. As a result, my short slurs came out with only two segments and a fairly wide gap in between. This is less clearly legible on the staff and, when printed out, may be mistaken for a printout quality problem rather than a deliberately dotted slur. Longer slurs too tend to be less legible against the staff lines both in the Morimoto and the Kneifl variants because of the thinner line and the wide gaps. In the case of the Morimoto slurs, the shallower curvature has an additional detrimental effect on the legibility of some dotted slurs. Additional comments on Morimoto slurs: ===================================== Processing time is several times longer than for bitmapped or Kneifl slurs. The musixpss.exe/Metapost run took a couple of minutes on my system (1800MHz CPU, 512 MB RAM) and created 490 (four hundred and ninety) small auxiliary files in the working directory. This may have been too much for my TeX shell (Crimson Editor 3.51) to handle, as it crashed at the end of the run. Conclusion: ========== For my purposes, the bitmapped slurs still seem to be my best bet in any score that needs to distinguish solid from dotted slurs. This is a pity as the bitmapped slurs can produce some odd shapes in certain situations, and both of the Postscript variants appear to give more pleasing results here; however, in my opinion legibility and clarity of intent does take priority over prettiness of line. I also find the file size increase disappointing with both Postscript options. As for the problem of Acrobat Reader not displaying bitmapped ties, I am able to circumvent this problem on my system (Acrobat 5.0) by avoiding the use of dvipdfm. PDFs generated with this utility don't show ties; the same source file taken through dvips and the Convert function of GSView displays flawlessly on my machine. Where backwards compatibility is not an issue (or in the case of an existing score that does not contain MusixTeX beam slurs) and where dotted slurs are not needed, my preference would be for the Kneifl slurs both on appearance and ease of use (no extra executables to run, no additional auxiliary files created). Eva Jaksch _______________________________________________ Tex-music mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://icking-music-archive.org/mailman/listinfo/tex-music
