[FEAT] Standard field for page size and resolution of any scan

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Albrights
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[FEAT] Standard field for page size and resolution of any scan

Post by Albrights »

Assuming that
  • it is useful for there to be versions of the same score tailored for different page sizes and purposes available
    (untailored “raw” scan, tailored but original page size, DIN A, letter, versions with very small or zero margins for screen use…)
    (colour, greyscale, mono b/w)
    (different resolutions might be available or not, preferences might differ depending on use case)
  • users might generally want to know what size and resolution the pdf is before downloading
  • information on these properties of the scans is often available on the sites, but isn’t presented in a standard format
  • it’s possible to just add these details to the File Description (after Complete Score or similar), but we’ve had disagreements on whether or how to do this ((1))
I suggest that it would be good to
  • ask for those details in the uploading form
  • present them (if known) with any individual scan
  • in an automatic manner
  • legibly, but unobtrusively.
Parameters (not assumed to be a complete list):
  • page size
  • possibly margins
  • colour space
  • resolution
  • further remarks (intended printing methods, …)
Arguably leaving it informal has advantages too.

Hypothetically we might end up in a future where multiple people/institutions tailor and post-process the same score according to different personal preferences, resulting in multiple available variants with identical/similar parameters. But I’m sure we don’t need to cater for that possibility…

((1))
I’ve been tailoring scans (new scans and existing IMSLP scores) and uploading them for quite a while now. This is how I’ve usually annotated them:
https://imslp.org/index.php?title=14_Ba ... id=4532587
Then in this case the details got too many to easily fit (depending on device, I guess), so Sallen made it smaller, which I thought a great idea:
https://imslp.org/index.php?title=3_Pie ... id=4533965
https://imslp.org/index.php?title=Die_l ... id=4535283
I think the small font looks much better even for short annotations, but that was not appreciated:
https://imslp.org/index.php?title=Commo ... id=4537785
https://imslp.org/index.php?title=Theme ... id=4537814
Albrights
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Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2015 11:13 pm
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Re: [FEAT] Standard field for page size and resolution of any scan

Post by Albrights »

I’m aware that the Manual of Style instructs to post those details to the Misc. Notes section. So I guess this is also me being so bold as to request changing that policy.

I’ll try argue my point a bit: There’s usually one Misc. Notes field for one publication. As long as of that publication there is only one scan, represented by one file, on IMSLP, there’s no issue having the info on scanning, printing, quality etc. in Misc. Notes. But as soon as there’s multiple scans, it gets unwieldy, let alone if one or more of the scans have different files (Complete Score, Title pages, Book 1, Book 2, …) and now another scan gets added which needs its own Misc. Notes. Alright, it may often work out to say “Sibley score scanned at 600dpi”, but that already requires the reader to make the connection to whichever of those files is from the Sibley library—not everyone will recognise the abbreviation, to put it mildly, most may not be observant to the Scanner info at all.

So any information like b/w, 72 dpi, margins for displaying on Kindle, layout for A4 double-side 2-on-1 printing, etc.—maybe even “page 72 very blurry”—needs to be clearly associated with the individual file that it applies to.

I realise that this starts to amount to a huge change to the layout of the core portion of IMSLP’s pages :(
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