ABC to PNG

[feste]

Newbie here, [albeit 64 with a 40 year old music degree] so appologies if this is the wrong place.

Q: how can I convert ABC notation to good quality PNGs? Must I get to grips with abcm2ps and ghostscript? or is there a simpler solution? I currently use EasyABC which I find excellent; simple, intuitative [to use! did not require me to r.t.f.m], produces instant notation, plays midi, transposes etc but seems only to output an ABC file in which I can't find separate images stored.

I want a PNG because they re-size automatically and well in Word and other documents and are mostly clear, good quality images. Those generated by abcnotation.com are excellent but I usually want to edit, transpose etc the underlying notation so usually can't use them. The PNGs generated by folkinfo.org are little better than jpegs for some weird reason and JPEG is the only output from concertina.net. 'Not good enough' as far as I am concerned means zigzaggy beams as in the image.

Thanks for any help, advice.

sample-abc-images.jpg (62.87 KiB) Viewed 4760 times

[Jon Freeman]

folkinfo pngs are only intended as drafts for onscreen display. If you want an image format rather than a pdf and can use it, try the svg output.

I disagree with you and pngs scaling. Your software may be doing a reasonable job but png is a raster graphic and is likely to get blocky when you enlarge it. svg on the other hand is a vector graphic and should scale well.

[Jon Freeman]

And on production of the images.

I don't know what other methods are available but I use abcm2ps. This will produce an svg image directly (see -g, -G and -X options). To get a png, you need to convert abcm2ps postscript output using a program like ghostscript.

[cboody]

I don't understand why you would not want to use the PDF format. I can't see any advantage to PNG at all. Can you enlighten me??

[rukhsana]

When abcm2ps encounters a line of notes ending with a backslash, it breaks the printed lines according to its own calculation, which is normally desirable. If however a line does not end with a backslash, abcm2ps breaks the printed line immediately. First question: Is this actually the standard? If not, what is?

[jan_olieslagers]

Yes, standard behaviour is to create one line of music for each line of text. You can change this behaviour with the %% barsperstaff directive but (for what I do) this is rarely useful.