Sibelius - the leading music composition and notation software

To create a multi-section score for a collection of songs or movements or musical theater numbers, you proceed as in the reference manual 1.10 to create a section for each song/movement, or number, then insert a "Title" and a "Heading (after first page)" at the beginning of
each section.

Section headers are important for multi-section works. They let you quickly flip through the pages to
"13. Stardust" or "Movement 2" or "Scene 13. Sally returns". This is particularly desirable when you
don't have a Table of Contents for the work.

The problem is with the Header. To get multiple headers,
you have to (thanks to Lawrence Payne for this info)

1) Go to Text>Edit Test Style for "Header (after first
page)" and specify "border>erase background".

2) Select a Header, and then "Appearance>Bring Forward".

However, that's not quite enough. Now each new header overlays the preceding ones, but all the headers have to be the same length, or the trailing portions of preceding headers will show through on subsequent shorter headers. It doesn't help to simply append trailing
blanks to shorter headers, since Sibelius ignores those trailing blanks. The only solution I've found is to append trailing blanks, and then a period, which preserves the preceding blanks.

You then have a headers for each section, with the glitch that there is an odd period off to the right of each header.

So my requested enhancement is EITHER:

1) Retain trailing blanks in header text,
so that the trailing period won't be required, OR

2) Simply specify that each header overrides
any previous headers. That's how every
word processor treats multiple headers.

Thanks.

--
Phil Shaw
Sibelius 8.5.1 - Windows 7
Sony laptop - i7 [email protected] - 6GB RAM

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by PhilShaw - 21 Apr 04:40AM

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I found a hack to avoid the trailing period. Find a Wildcard that you don't use, i.e. that will be blank. For me that's \$Artist\. Then use \$Artist\ instead of the period to preserve preceding blanks.

Still, that's three obscure hacks you need to use to get the effect that's the default for all word processors (border>erase background, appearance>bring to front, and unused Wildcard). I think that having subsequent Headers override previous headers would almost be a bug fix, and would probably cause no incompatibilities. i don't know why anyone would be using multiple headers with the current default behavior.

--
Phil Shaw
Sibelius 8.5.1 - Windows 7
Sony laptop - i7 [email protected] - 6GB RAM

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by PhilShaw - 21 Apr 04:53AM

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Embarrassed! I'm so embarrassed! The hack I described doesn't work!
I guess I just wanted it to work so badly that I saw what I wanted to see. The empty Wildcard has no effect at all.

--
Phil Shaw
Sibelius 8.5.1 - Windows 7
Sony laptop - i7 [email protected] - 6GB RAM

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Bob Zawalich - 21 Apr 08:26AM (edited 21 Apr 08:51AM)

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I am not sure if this works in general, but if you have a header style that erases background, and you move it forward, and you click on the text, you will see some handles (Sib 7+ at least) for the text frame.

If you drag the end handles so the enclosing box widens, you can set it to be wider than the earlier header, and it appears that the box will overwrite the other text.

You might also want to set the horizontal position of text in the text frame to be left aligned so that stretching the text box will not center the text in the enlarged box (2nd screenshot). The text will then shift to the left which you may not want. Experiment with this bit.

See screenshot. If you drag header 2 onto header 1 it will hide it.

Unfortunately plugins have no access to text frames so this can't be automated.

--
Bob

An experienced user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 8, Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, 32 G RAM. Year 2017.
For plugin categories see http://www.nycmusicservices.com/musicresources
For manual plugin installation see http://www.sibelius.com/download/plugins/index.html?help=install

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snap2.png (26K)

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by PhilShaw - 22 Apr 03:47AM

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Bob,

Expanding the border using the little boxes on the corners
did the job (this time I double-checked). That blanks out the preceding Headers, with no need
for the trailing period.

The procedure for creating multiple sections with Titles and Headers is then as follows:

*) Create new sections as described in the manual, 1.10
*) Create a new Title on the first page of each new section.
*) Create a new "Header (after first page)" on the first page
of each new section.
*) Go to House Style > Edit Text Styles > Header (after first page)
and set Border to 'Erase Background'.
*) Set Appearance>'Bring to front' on each new header.
*) Click on each new header, so that the little boxes appear
at the corners of the border, then click on a right-hand
little box, and drag it so that the box is as large as the
largest preceding header.
*) Every new header will then cover the preceding ones.

I still think that it would be a good (and easy) enhancement
(or bug-fix) to have subsequent headers override preceding headers,
as is the default on all tet processors, so avoid the need for the above multiple hacks.

Many thanks.

Many thanks.

--
Phil Shaw
Sibelius 8.5.1 - Windows 7
Sony laptop - i7 [email protected] - 6GB RAM

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by PhilShaw - 23 Apr 08:43PM

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Alas, the hack I described above doesn't work. The problem is the step where you select a subsequent header and click "Appearance>Bring to Front". That works fine for one appended document (which is all I initially tried it with), but it doesn't work for two or more appended documents. If you click "Appearance>Bring to Front" for the second, third, fourth, etc documents, then they're all in front, and pile on each other.

So I don't see any way to get different headers on multi-section appended scores unless there's an enhancement/big-fix to have subsequent Headers override preceding Headers (as word processors do).

This seems like a simple enhancement that would make a big improvement for "book" scores.

(If this enhancement were made, I'd volunteer to write a plug-in to generate a TOC for a multi-section score. I've outlined one, and it seems straightforward.)

--
Phil Shaw
Sibelius 8.5.1 - Windows 7
Sony laptop - i7 [email protected] - 6GB RAM

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Kai Struck - 23 Apr 10:35PM

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Hi Phil,

I think you can make it work if you set the z-order more explicit. You can set the order number for each Header. It is on the Ribbon->Appearance->Order:
Lower number is in the background, higher in the foreground.
So your case works here by setting
Heading 1 to 1
Heading 2 to 2
Heading 3 to 3
Heading 4 to 4

In the Textstyle you can also set a fixed size of the textframe so you don't have to adjust that with the mouse. The setting will be used for a new created text object. For already existent text objects you have to "Reset position" (ctrl+shift+p).

Does this work for you?

TOC would be great. What do you mean with "I've outlined one"?

--
Windows7 Pro, Lubuntu 15.10, Sibelius 7.1.3, LibreOffice 4.4.7, OpenOffice 4.1.2
Free Project: LibreOffice Songbook Architect (LOSA)
http://struckkai.blogspot.de/2015/04/libreofficesongbookarchitect.html
SVG-Tools:
http://struckkai.blogspot.com/2016/02/svg-tools.html

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by PhilShaw - 23 Apr 11:53PM

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Kai,

This works, sort of. The only problem is that the number of orders is limited to 32, and the music theater works I do typically have 40 to 50 numbers.

By 'outlined' I mean that I've sketched the loops enough to convince myself that the needed info is available to a plug-in:

--------------

for each BarObject B in in Sibelius.SysstemStaff

for each SystemTextItem STI in B
If StyleAsText(STI) = "Title"
PNC = PageNumberChange(B)
PN = PageNumber(PNC)
T = Text(STI)

output (T, PN)
----------------------
I would generate the TOC as a basic HTML file that could then either be printed to PDF or input to a word processor for further formatting.

Thanks,

Phil Shaw
Sibelius 8.5.1 - Windows 7
Sony laptop - i7 [email protected] - 6GB RAM

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Bob Zawalich - 24 Apr 01:54AM (edited 27 Apr 06:52PM)

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So clearly you cannot overlay more than 32 headers, and that will not work in this case.

How about just forgetting the repeat nature or header text. Create a new text style based on Header but with no repeat behavior.
Make one up and copy it to as many pages as appropriate, then add another, edit the text, and start copying again.

It is really not that much more work than adding a new header at each starting place, though you have to keep up with it when pages change.

You could write a simple plugin that looks for that text style and tells you which pages it is located on with the same text.

For extra credit, write a plugin that lets you specify a text style and then lets you specify the text and the pages it should appear on. When it comes up it could show you what is currently out there, and the plugin could replace the text of the existing headers so they match your map.

--
Bob

An experienced user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 8, Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, 32 G RAM. Year 2017.
For plugin categories see http://www.nycmusicservices.com/musicresources
For manual plugin installation see http://www.sibelius.com/download/plugins/index.html?help=install

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by PhilShaw - 25 Apr 04:18AM

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Bob,

Thanks. That would work, but my things are typically around 350-400 pages, so it would be a bit much.

I think for now I'll just use my old approach: I keep each number as a separate file, then to prepare the overall document, I print out to PDF each score with no page numbers (but of course with headings on all but the first page). Then I concatenate all of the PDFs (with Acrobat this is a single drag-and-drop), and add page numbers using Acrobat. This works fine. I wanted to try doing it all in Sibelius because of the possibility of a plug-in to generate a TOC.

Anyway, thanks to all for the suggestions.

--
Phil Shaw
Sibelius 8.5.1 - Windows 7
Sony laptop - i7 [email protected] - 6GB RAM

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Kai Struck - 25 Apr 10:34AM

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If you are experienced with LibreOffice then you could have a look in my signature at LOSA. This can merge all your PDFs, generates invisible headings from their filenames used for headers and can automatically create a TOC.

--
Windows7 Pro, Lubuntu 15.10, Sibelius 7.1.3, LibreOffice 4.4.7, OpenOffice 4.1.2
Free Project: LibreOffice Songbook Architect (LOSA)
http://struckkai.blogspot.de/2015/04/libreofficesongbookarchitect.html
SVG-Tools:
http://struckkai.blogspot.com/2016/02/svg-tools.html

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by PhilShaw - 26 Apr 05:52AM

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Kai,

I looked at the LOSA website and the video and have a couple of questions.

The capability I would want is the second feature, "Import PDF files". It appears that to do this I need to install LibreOffice, LOSA, and PDFtk. Am I right? Do I need to learn to use LibreOffice and PDftk? Or are they only used internally by LOSA?

The example in the video seems to be concatenating 3 PDF files each of which is a book containing multiple songs or movements, and the resulting PDF file contains a TOC with both those 3 files and the "sub-ToC" of each. My problem is simpler. I just have around 45 PDF files, each of which contains one number from a musical theater work, and I want to concatenate them, add page numbers, and generate a TOC with the 45 numbers. To do this, will I still need LibreOffice and PDFtk?

Thanks,

Phil Shaw
Sibelius 8.5.1 - Windows 7
Sony laptop - i7 [email protected] - 6GB RAM

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Kai Struck - 26 Apr 10:38AM (edited 26 Apr 10:47AM)

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Hi Phil,
You only need to install LibreOffice and then (for working with PDFs) PDFtk.
LOSA itself is a LibreOffice document, but it has a buitlin Toolbar and controls PDFtk. So you "only" have to learn LibreOffice.
Good knowledge of Page Styles, Page breaks, Paragraph Styles, TOC-formatting is recommended)

The video really isn't the greatest. I really should do a more clear one (but the time...)

I shouldn't have chosen an import PDF that already has a TOC, as this is a bit misleading.
Only the first TOC is generated.
So yes, if you have 45 PDF files with filenames like "Scene 1", "Scene 2" etc. then they can all be imported in one go and will appear in the TOC as 45 entries.
As default, LOSA imports all PDFs that are located in a subdirectory called "source" when you click on the "In"-button.
Each of them then appear in the document as Heading, from which the TOC is generated. The order can easily be rearranged by manually shifting the "Headings" in the Navigator.

In the video there is an example starting at minute 11:30.

In the moment you press "out" the TOC will be updated, all PDFs will be merged.
So always the PDFs in the "source" folder will land in the final document. This makes updating scores easy as they are independent from the "Songbook". (Only when the number of pages of a "source"-PDF changes then you have to adjust that in the LO-document manually)

The rest depends on how good you know LibreOffice. With correct usage of page and paragraph styles every score can automatically start on a "right page" or you just manually insert "empty" pages etc.

What you should definitely do is setting the page size of the used paragraph styles to your desired one if it differs from the default "A4" format.
All PDFs will automatically be scaled to fit in the chosen page size (in the final PDF, not the individual PDF-files on the HDD of course).

--
Windows7 Pro, Lubuntu 15.10, Sibelius 7.1.3, LibreOffice 4.4.7, OpenOffice 4.1.2
Free Project: LibreOffice Songbook Architect (LOSA)
http://struckkai.blogspot.de/2015/04/libreofficesongbookarchitect.html
SVG-Tools:
http://struckkai.blogspot.com/2016/02/svg-tools.html

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Bob Zawalich - 27 Apr 06:59PM

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Ok. Here is a pretty hacky way to get above 32 headers.

It assumes you are creating a header style with a fixed text box width (I have found 150 mm x 4 mm to be reasonable).

Once you get to level 31, you could create a blank header at draw order 32. It needs to contain some non-blank characters, so put in a ~, which will not display, but will cause the text box to exist (leave View > hidden objects on so you can find it).

Drag the blank header over the old header and it will be hidden.

Unfortunately you cannot vertically reposition the header you have hidden without moving them on all pages, so to create more headers you need to create a new text style which is a clone of the one you were just using.

Set it to be vertically positioned just above or just below the style it is cloned from. Now create further headers with this style, starting with draw order 1.

The later headers will be at a slightly different height than the previous ones, which may be a deal breaker. But if not, it should get you more headers.

What to do after 64 is left as an exercise to the reader...

--
Bob

An experienced user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 8, Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, 32 G RAM. Year 2017.
For plugin categories see http://www.nycmusicservices.com/musicresources
For manual plugin installation see http://www.sibelius.com/download/plugins/index.html?help=install

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Bob Zawalich - 27 Apr 03:48PM (edited 27 Apr 08:36PM)

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So if 32 headers are enough, the Phil and Kai's suggestions should work.

I have found that if you go to the Borders area of Edit Text Style and set the style to use a fixed text box (say 150mm x 5 mm or so), and use Center for horizontal position, you don't even need to tweak the individual text boxes.

Once the text style is set up all you really need to do is make sure that the draw order for each succeeding Header is greater than that of the previous header. You can select the previous header and find its draw order in Appearances>Order.

It would of course be nice if we did not need to do this at all...

--
Bob

An experienced user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 8, Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, 32 G RAM. Year 2017.
For plugin categories see http://www.nycmusicservices.com/musicresources
For manual plugin installation see http://www.sibelius.com/download/plugins/index.html?help=install

Attachment

snap1.png (24K)

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Philip R - 28 Apr 02:28PM

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This is something I've long wished for in Sibelius. To have headers that only apply to a bar number range or page range would be terrific.

--
Sibelius 7.5.1, 8.5.1, Mac 10.12.3
Mac Pro (Late 2013) 32 GB RAM
http://www.nycmusicservices.com/
http://www.sibeliusblog.com/

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Bob Zawalich - 28 Apr 03:26PM

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I agree with Philip. Just having a header of the same style terminate a previous header would accomplish most of what is needed here.

--
Bob

An experienced user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 8, Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, 32 G RAM. Year 2017.
For plugin categories see http://www.nycmusicservices.com/musicresources
For manual plugin installation see http://www.sibelius.com/download/plugins/index.html?help=install

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by PhilShaw - 29 Apr 10:33PM

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Bob said "Just having a header of the same style terminate a previous header would accomplish most of what is needed here".

Most? I think it would accomplish all of what is needed. I can't think how anyone would use multiple headers with the current behavior, so I think that this should be regarded as a bug fix rather than an enhancement. And it might turn out to be a very easy bug fix.

Multiple headers would be a very nice capability for any score that has multiple songs or movements.

Thanks to all for the responses.

--
Phil Shaw
Sibelius 8.5.1 - Windows 7
Sony laptop - i7 [email protected] - 6GB RAM

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Dave P-B - 30 Apr 03:25AM (edited 30 Apr 04:10AM)

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> This is something I've long wished for in Sibelius. To have headers that only apply to a bar number range or page range would be terrific.
>

I also agree with Philip. Particularly that the page/bar number range could be set, in the same manner you can currently renumber bars. Or, that a header/footer could be hidden on certain pages, independent of other pages. This would avoid a header showing on a subsequent title page.

Cheers,
Dave

--
Sib 8.4.2
MacPro, 16GB RAM, OS 10.11.6
http://www.davepb.com

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by PhilShaw - 30 Apr 05:13AM

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Dave,

"This would avoid a header showing on a subsequent title page".

Currently, when you put a "Header(after first page)" on the first page of the second or subsequent section, it doesn't show on that first page of the new section, so the capability you describe is already there. The only thing missing is for the new header to override any preceding header.

--
Phil Shaw
Sibelius 8.5.1 - Windows 7
Sony laptop - i7 [email protected] - 6GB RAM

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Bob Zawalich - 30 Apr 07:13PM (edited 01 May 05:56AM)

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And again.

If a header overrode any previous header, you would not need to do anything. This is a big deal. You would not have to go in and tinker with headers to tell them when to end, they would just do it if a new one is added.

The simplest UI is none at all...

--
Bob

An experienced user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 8, Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, 32 G RAM. Year 2017.
For plugin categories see http://www.nycmusicservices.com/musicresources
For manual plugin installation see http://www.sibelius.com/download/plugins/index.html?help=install

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Dave P-B - 01 May 03:20AM

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> If a header overrode and previous header, you would not need to do anything. This is a big deal. You would not have to go in and tinker with headers to tell them when to end, they would just do it if a new one is added.
>
> The simplest UI is none at all...

+1

--
Sib 8.4.2
MacPro, 16GB RAM, OS 10.11.6
http://www.davepb.com

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Bob Zawalich - 09 May 09:26AM (edited 09 May 04:44PM)

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For Sib 6 you do not have access to text frames and draw order, but it is possible to do something similar to create multiple headers.

In Sib 6 you need to set up the header to use Erase Background, but again that is not enough. Fortunately, if you add additional headers the new one appears to overlay the previous one, so that avoids the drawing layer problem.

However, there are still 2 issues
1. Successive headers must be as long or longer than the previous ones
2. Successive headers must be as tall as previous ones. If the previous text has ascenders or descenders (such as ly) the new text will need that too.

You cannot just add spaces to the end of the text to widen it, since Sibelius will trim that off. However, you can put in spaces followed by a ~ (tilde), which is invisible. Furthermore, you can follow the ~ with ‘ly’, which provides an invisible ascender and descender, and that handles the height problems. Anything following a ~ will not print or display if unselected.

Some examples (you will need to imagine there are spaces before the ~ly):

Header 2 spaces followed by tilde need descender ~ly
Header 1 is pretty long so you need something longer than this long bit of text

Becomes

Header 2 spaces followed by tilde need descender

Here are 3 headers:

Header 2 spaces followed by tilde need descender
Header 1 is pretty long so you need something longer than this long bit of text
Header 3 ~ly

Becomes

Header 3

Works great, at least in my tests in Windows 10.

--
Bob

An experienced user of Sibelius. Sib 1.2 - 8, Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, 32 G RAM. Year 2017.
For plugin categories see http://www.nycmusicservices.com/musicresources
For manual plugin installation see http://www.sibelius.com/download/plugins/index.html?help=install

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Philip R - 10 May 01:56PM

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Inspired by this discussion, I've written a blog post about this and published it here:

http://www.scoringnotes.com/tips/adding-headers-multi-movement-works-sibelius/

--
Sibelius 7.5.1, 8.5.1, Mac 10.12.3
Mac Pro (Late 2013) 32 GB RAM
http://www.nycmusicservices.com/
http://www.sibeliusblog.com/

Re: Enhancement request: improved support for multiple
Posted by Philip R - 26 May 03:32PM

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For anyone still following this post in 2022, there is finally a better way of doing this in Sibelius, starting with Sibelius 2022.5:

https://www.scoringnotes.com/reviews/sibelius-2022-5/

--
Sibelius 2022.5
https://www.nycmusicservices.com/
https://www.scoringnotes.com/