VIEWING PIECES WRITTEN WITH MOZART

The mozart Viewer:   mozart's .mz files may be viewed directly using the mozart Viewer.   One doesn't need to buy mozart in order to view, print, and play files written with it.   And the mozart viewer is free.   So if you have received a mozart file, just download the viewer from the mozart viewer page, and use it to read the file.   If you wish to send mozart files to a friend who does not have mozart, then please just show them where the viewer may be found.

PDF:   If you are distributing music written with mozart, an alternative approach is to convert it to a PDF file.   The PDF format has the advantage that it is general purpose and that many people already have a PDF reader (such as the Adobe Acrobat reader) installed on their computers.

[Note: viewing music in a PDF file on the screen may not give quite as sharp an image as the mozart Viewer does with the original mozart file.   This is because the PDF image is very flexibly resizable whereas the mozart Viewer, like mozart itself, guarantees that the five-line staves are always drawn with the lines separated vertically by exactly the same number of pixels.  Also the PDF file does not offer play-back.   For printing a document however, this may be of little consequence, and the flexibility of PDF may be an advantage.]

The remainder of this article is about how to get started creating PDF files.
 

PDF FORMAT

PDF (Portable Document Format) was conceived by Adobe as a general-purpose format for circulating documents so that they can be read an printed but not edited. The Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader is available free of charge from http://www.adobe.com

Software for writing PDF files is sold by different companies and prices vary.   Examples are

    Adobe:            http://www.adobe.com

    FinePrint:         http://www.fineprint.com

And there is at least one free system for creating PDF files:

    GhostScript:    http://www.ghostscript.com

PDF is designed to be writable from any application which produces printed documents.  Generally the method involves installing a printer driver and printing from the application (in this case mozart) to that fictitious printer, resulting (ultimately or immediately) in the production of a PDF file representation of the document.

There has been some discussion on the mozart mailing list on how one sets up GhostScript in particular.  Some mozart users have had considerable success with it and have reported on this for the benefit of mozart users.  We summarise some of this next. 

 PRODUCING PDF FILES WITH GHOSTSCRIPT

As noted above this option is free but may be less simple to set up than those you pay for.   It therefore may not be the only option worth considering. 

However, if you want to try it and need help,  Jamie Thom, has produced a brief guide for mozart users.  (Thanks to Sarah Green for reminding me of this.)

Creating PDF files with GhostScript  in the way Jamie summarises is a two stage process.  First you use a PostScript printer driver (you "install" the printer but you don't have to have one) to create a PostScript file and then you use the GhostScript/GhostView software to convert the PostScript (.ps) file into a PDF (.pdf) file.

Michael Bednarek has first pointed out the existence of an associated piece of software (also available free of charge) called RedMon (Redirection Monitor)  see http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/redmon/  which streamlines this allowing creation of a PDF file in a single step, and then reported on his later discoveries which make everything even easier still.

Here is their combined wisdom:

    Jamie Thom's Introduction to PDF-making with GhostScript  (in PDF format)

    Michael Bednarek's first guide to installing PDF writing capability.  (in plain text format)

    Michael Bednarek's further discoveries which make it even easier!  ( also in plain text format)

Producing PDF files with WordPerfect

Bill Smith notes that WordPerfect Office 12 has the built-in ability to export PDF files.   In order to produce music PDF files he uses the simple expedient of copying a mozart document page (at printer resolution) using mozart's Edit/CopyPageImage command, pasting into WordPerfect, and then saving the WordPerfect document as a PDF file.    He has supplied the following example of the results.

   Bill Smith's method: an example PDF file.

[As noted above, the stave lines can look uneven on the screen (depending on the magnification), but printing produce very acceptable results.]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This article is a summary based on a number of people's contributions to the mozart mailing list. Thanks to all those who have contributed to the discussion there.