07-03-2020, 05:09 AM
I am looking for fellow musicians who are determined to locate and display songs without the time consuming extraction of individual songs or use of Excel spreadsheets. I am hoping that there are others out there in the ethos who, like me, have been considering searchable pdf's as a solution.
Here's the technical summary (skip if you wish). It's essentially impossible to search for text in a traditional pdf since it's simply an image. A conversion program can look for patterns that appear to be text and record the text content and location in an invisible "layer" below the image. So if you grab a search program that can detect that text (e.g., title, composer, lyric...) it becomes very easy to to locate and display the entire page image with the desired text highlighted. Not bad for a start.
The sequence here is to take the original scanned image pdf of the printed music, convert it to a searchable pdf, search that pdf for what you want (a title, composer, etc), and then display it as a musician would like it.
Unfortunately, MS does not detect that text information. There is software out there that, although not originally intended for this purpose, can do the detection and something of a good job of displaying the charts. For example, in Windows, the explorer can easily locate the searchable data. It can then pass that information along to a program such as Adobe Acrobat which can display the chart looking just like a book and, trumpets please, also allow for turning pages by keyboard or foot pedal. I want the system to successfully pass the data all the way to MS because its display and bells and whistle are so good.
I'm currently at the making sure each program in the line can do its job, and then, how to pass along information from program to program with as little human intervention as possible. Got any questions or experience here? Leave me a message and I'll write back promptly.
Thanks.
Here's the technical summary (skip if you wish). It's essentially impossible to search for text in a traditional pdf since it's simply an image. A conversion program can look for patterns that appear to be text and record the text content and location in an invisible "layer" below the image. So if you grab a search program that can detect that text (e.g., title, composer, lyric...) it becomes very easy to to locate and display the entire page image with the desired text highlighted. Not bad for a start.
The sequence here is to take the original scanned image pdf of the printed music, convert it to a searchable pdf, search that pdf for what you want (a title, composer, etc), and then display it as a musician would like it.
Unfortunately, MS does not detect that text information. There is software out there that, although not originally intended for this purpose, can do the detection and something of a good job of displaying the charts. For example, in Windows, the explorer can easily locate the searchable data. It can then pass that information along to a program such as Adobe Acrobat which can display the chart looking just like a book and, trumpets please, also allow for turning pages by keyboard or foot pedal. I want the system to successfully pass the data all the way to MS because its display and bells and whistle are so good.
I'm currently at the making sure each program in the line can do its job, and then, how to pass along information from program to program with as little human intervention as possible. Got any questions or experience here? Leave me a message and I'll write back promptly.
Thanks.