On 2023-01-09 11:12 am, Jean Abou Samra wrote:
I'm not really sure how to get factual data about this (a straw poll
on the user list?).
In my experience, for things like logos, SVG is more common (there
*are*
logos in PDF, they're just less common as far as I know, but again this
is
only my experience).
Logos are probably most common on cover pages, but some of the folios in
our choir's repository do start the music on the cover. As such,
publisher logos and other artwork sometimes appear on that first page
along side notation. The last page might also have non-musical
graphics.
Of course, I have no idea what formats these houses use internally, but
the art libraries that I have access to use EPS for the vector format.
I suspect that SVG is just too "new" a format for these older resources.
(NOTE: One of the libraries I have also provides JPEGs but I find the
DPI to be too low for any print use, and even screen use is not great.
I wonder if PNG was too novel a format when this library was assembled.)
I have had some success with converting EPS to SVG (albeit with some
manual correction for color spaces), so I would have no real objection
with LilyPond moving towards SVG as its preferred vector-based image
format. What I would fight against is any form of rasterization. When
helping to prepare bulletins and inserts for my church, it is a real
struggle getting our printer to produce high quality output. Pure
vector is the only way to have sharp, clear music notation. Even very
high DPI raster ends up slightly out of focus. I suspect that somewhere
in the software and hardware stacks, raster images are undergoing
photographic manipulation/optimization. That is, they expect raster to
be a natural real-world image, so it can freely mess about with gamma
correction and low-pass filtering. Line artwork and music content does
not fit this pattern, so it gets muddled.
So, my only comment on the specific libraries and technologies that we
end up using is that there must exist a pure vector pipeline from input
sources to output documents. It is not burdensome for me to have to
migrate my art assets to SVG.
-- Aaron Hill
