Page numbering

[David Ward]

If I were to bind in a single volume some songs for voice and piano interspersed with several title and information pages, should only the pages with music (plus any necessary blank LH pages) be included in the total page numbering? Or should the various title and information pages (although they won't display page numbers) be included as well?

After the outer cover (with blank on its reverse) followed by a general title page, then a contents page, there should be a total of 14 title and information pages and 68 pages of music (including a few blank LH pages at the ends of songs or songs sets). As I say, only pages with music on them will actually display page numbers.

My first instinct had been not to include the non-musical pages in the numbering, but on further thought that seems wrong, so in the absence of any advice to the contrary, I'll include all pages except the initial volume title and volume contents pages in the numbering (but will only display numbers on the music pages).

[John Ruggero]

I believe the system that you describe is what I have seen in such cases.

[benwiggy]

As with text books, it's very common for prefatory pages "not to count", and to have their own numbering in roman numerals.

My Baerenreiter and Ricordi scores both do this. I have an Edition Peters Christmas Oratorio that starts the music on page 5.

If you're assembling prelims from DTP software and the music from Finale, etc, then it's easier to restart the count on the music, rather than introduce another thing to go wrong.

[John Ruggero]

It's common to use roman numerals for extensive introductory pages, but I don't think that is David's situation, although at first I thought it was. I think his non-music pages are interspersed among the music pages. But I am not sure.

[David Ward]

… … … I think his non-music pages are interspersed among the music pages. But I am not sure.

Yes, they are interspersed among the music pages, which was the reason for my question.

[benwiggy]

Ah. Sorry. "What a difference a word makes."

As part of my bundle of PDF utilities for MacOS, I have an Automator workflow that puts page numbers on a PDF. It's ideal for use after you've collated PDFs from different sources into one document, so as to avoid any numbering problems between sections.

Of course, old books with colour plate sections usually excluded them from the page numbering; though again this was for practical reasons that no longer apply.

[John Ruggero]

As part of my bundle of PDF utilities for MacOS, I have an Automator workflow that puts page numbers on a PDF. It's ideal for use after you've collated PDFs from different sources into one document, so as to avoid any numbering problems between sections.

I'm very glad you brought that up, Ben, because for such cases, I have been using the numbering tool within Acrobat Pro, which is very clunky. Do I have the utility you mention on my Mac (OS 12.6)?

[benwiggy]

It's part of my PDF Suite of Mac OS Services and scripts.

https://github.com/benwiggy/PDFsuite

You can download the Automator workflow just for page numbering here:
https://github.com/benwiggy/PDFsuite/bl ... rkflow.zip

and then add it to ~/Library/Services.

You can then access it from a right click on a file in the Finder.

If you open the workflow in Automator, you can change the X-Y position of the number from the outside corner of the page, and the font!

Once you have it as you want, it's easy as right-clicking on a PDF to get a copy with page numbers!

[David Ward]

Checking, I seem to have downloaded your PDF Services in 2018. I use the watermark service from time to time (for scores displayed on-line) which works exactly as I might wish. I probably should use the page numbering service for parts combining several files, as the easiest way to overcome Finale's page offset limitations. I can see it might also be useful for the song collection (subject of this thread), if it weren't for my wish not to display numbers on the interspersed non-music pages - or maybe I should give up that idea and number everything after the initial title and contents pages. Indeed, why not?

This links to an example of the watermark from Ben's PDF Services Suite in use https://composers-uk.com/davidward/wp-c ... ore-WM.pdf I was able to adjust the opacity, the wording and its size myself, which must be fairly easy to do as my computer skills are modest.

[John Ruggero]

Thanks, Ben. I didn't realize you created that package. Very impressive. I will try it. The watermarks as seen in David's score are excellent and could come in handy as well.