Best Printing Method for PDF Scores

[jcabraham]

HI All,

I've noticed that some user-created scores (like those for Louis Couperin, for example), are beautifully done, and the pdfs look fantastic on-screen. Whenever I print them, however, two problems arise. 1) the glyphs the printer uses for notes, etc. are not as nice as those on screen, and 2) US letter paper seems too small for the output. The score seems small and cramped. Has anybody tried A4 paper, or is there a printing service which is commonly used?

JCA

[kalliwoda]

Actually, the "Pieces de Clavecin" look like they were compiled for letter size paper.

If you don't own a printer able to print without a border, try to set Adobe Reader to print without the "fit to printable area" option, because that adds another border to the one already present in the pdf. This should result in pages like on screen. For pages that are optimized for A4, try to adjust the percentage in the page setup menu to 91% if there is material on top or bottom missing - that increases the left and right borders but adjusts the printable area to fit on the shorter letter size paper.

Regarding the printed output: This file is actually the opposite of typical Finale pdf output, where the output on screen looks like **** with unevenly spaced lines in the staves, but prints wonderfully.

[coulonnus]

I guess you mean L.Couperin's Pieces de Clavecin, typeset by Steve Wiberg? Here I have an A4 printer. When I print the first Allemande with Adobe Reader, "page scaling=none" I obtain about 16 mm left margin and 8 mm right margin. "fit to printable area" adds bigger margins.

I do not see any glyph change, but I think the editor could increase the size of the musical stuff by 15% by 1: reducing the exagerated space between both staves of each system to what is absolutely neccessary 2: reducing the side and upper-lower margins. Then I'm sure he could put 7 systems/page without changing the measures of the page turns.

There are clashes between augmention dots and the flags of upper-stemmed 1/8th notes e.g. meas 3 of this Allemande, and printing won't cure this problem

Could you please give other examples of "user-created scores" with the same problems?

To: Injury Lawyer: I agree that another pdf viewer/printer won't improve things!

[Nomzam]

Umm I want to share my technique when even I need PDF print out I always print the screen first like page by page and then i can easily get exact printout."Reason" for this because I usually face this problem of graph and borders cutting so am happy with my technique

[daphnis]

Why not "fit to paper"? Your method sounds unnecessarily time consuming.

[coulonnus]

Why not "fit to paper"? Your method sounds unnecessarily time consuming.

Have you ever tried to print a http://http://gallica.bnf.fr// document? The BNF is a "specialist" of unnecessary margins. e.g. search: Fischer, Journal de Printemps.

No Adobe Reader option will be able to trim the pages appropriately! Adobe Reader always believes that the unnecessary margins that have been scanned are useful parts of the document!

[daphnis]

That is pretty wasteful, I agree. In those cases, I'd probably dump the images out and smart crop them.

[sdfsdk]

Hey, I want to offer my strategy for obtaining a precise printout when I need to print a PDF. I always work as outdoor furniture and print the screen first, like every page. The "reason" for this is that I frequently struggle with cutting borders and graphs, So I'm satisfied with my technique.