Subject: Fandango Documents Back to Index

Category: General See also: Document groups | Templates | Sections

A Fandango document consists of a set of elements and properties:

  1. A Title page
  2. A Preface
  3. A Table of contents
  4. A list of facsimile images
  5. A set of music sections (the scores)
  6. A number of links to other format files: MIDI, XML, images, PDF and HTML logically connected to the document.
  7. Printer, layout and font options

Note: There is no set limit on the number of sections you can add to a document. I have created Django documents with up to over 1000 short sections, and some documents are well over 1 Megabyte. There is, however, a practical limit in terms of document size, processing speed, and memory available on your computer.

Almost all document elements and properties are accessible from the two Ribbon menus: Document and Book settings

The Document ribbon has the following categories:

 

The Book settings ribbon has the following categories:

  1. Preliminaries:
    • Book settings dialog: access the document metadata and other global settings
    • Preface: Edit the preface in RTF format
    • Export table of contents to RTF: get a list of all sections in RTF format
  2. Title page:
    • Format titlepage using the WYSIWYG tool
    • Titlepage settings dialog: access the title page properties dialog tool
    • Document formatted title: Format an RTF title for the title page
    • Title page image: chose an image to display on the title Draw apage
    • Center all title page elements: centers everything on the title page
    • Frame styles for the title page: chose a rectangle style to frame the title page with
  3. Print elements options: chose which elements will appear in the printed copy, including Table of Contents options
  4. Document lock:
    • Your user profile information: set your profile information
    • A copyright statement: if you own the document you can specify copyright restrictions there
    • Access to locking mechanisms for copyright and protection

 

 

Title Page dialog

The document title, author information, and other information to appear on the title page can be edited by clicking the Books settings button either from the Document ribbon option or from the Book settings ribbon menu.

This dialog contains the following categories:

Print title page: whether or not to print a title page together with the document

Exclude document metadata: By default, metadata associated with the document will appear on the title page. You can disable that by checking this box.

Title page texts:

Title page frame: a choice of rectangles to frame the title page: no rectangle, simple, double or triple rectangle.

Facsimile list: A list of images to be displayed at the beginning of the book. This is different from the facsimiles associated to a section.

Title page image: an image file displayed on the title page. You can reset the dimensions according to a percentage value of the full image size.

Preface: if checked the Print preface will print the RTF preface text edited with the Edit preface button.

Table of contents options: This is quite complex and you have a number of options:

Title page WYSIWYG tool

After entering your text, setting the font, and the bitmap image in the dialog, you can set the position of those elements on the page by selecting Edit title page from the options menu. 

This feature gives you a WYSIWYG interface to position title page elements defined under the document and titlepage dialogs. The elements for the title page come from text that is defined in the Document properties dialog and the title page dialog itself. (See above)

The titlepage WYSIWYG editor includes its own short ribbon menu with links to the document properties and titlepage dialog boxes as well as some shortcuts to the elements defined in the title page dialog, such as a link to add an image, the selection of a frame, and some options common to both title pages and document layout as a whole.

The graphical interface allows you to reset the position of the text and image elements with the mouse.

Note: You can automatically center all text elements and titlepage picture with the menu's Center all text tracks command.

The title page dialog also gives you access to a preface editor. You can opt to display the preface or not when printing.

 

Book settings dialog

Book settings contain elements common to the whole document. The dialog offers the following options:

Page Layout

You can access the page settings dialog from the general document settings dialog or from the button labelled "Page layout options" on the pull-down menu on the File top toolbar. The dialog has several sections:

I. Sections layout and options

II. Braille paper setting

III. Paper sizes and margins

IV. Document fonts

V. Page numbering Allows you to select the position and font for page numbers. You can also indicate a text to appear in front of the page number. Note: you can use the % symbol to include the page number within a string. For instance: ( page % )

VI. Options

  1. Print all sections: If not checked, printing will only affect the current section in a document and the titlepage, table of contents and preliminary material will not be printed.
  2. New page on new section: Select if you want each section to start on a new page. This is very important if not all sections should have the same number of staves per page.
  3. Print facsimiles: Check this if you want the sections facsimile list to be printed, one image per page
  4. Do not print titles: Will not print titles if checked
  5. Bracket systems: Automatically bracket every stave in a multiple instrument context
  6. Print section comments: Print section notes and comments. The default is to print section notes on a separate page after the section.
  7. Print section comments at end of document: Print all section comments at the end of the document instead. The comments will be sequentially merged instead of printed each on a separate page
  8. Alternate margins: Switch the left and right margin values when printing to allow consistent spacing for binding purposes
  9. Proportional spacing: Use proportional spacing, i.e. spacing determined by the rhythm value of the flags
  10. Vertical justification: If checked, the spacing between the staves will be adjusted to fill out the page.
  11. Print every 5th bar number: By dedfault, Djanog prints bar numbers at the beginning of the stave. If this option is checked, bar numbers are printed every fifth bar where they occur
  12. Bar number height: Allows you to raise the position of bar numbering from the default position a little above the first line of the staff. 
     
  13. Justification: Minimum percentage of stave width under which the last bar will be positioned at the end of the stave.

 

Printer Setup:

Django documents have a printer definition as a property, with several important options. Printers have their own capabilities and ways of interpreting instructions depending on both the hardware and software they use. So the same document with two different printers selected may not look exactly the same. You can try for instance changing the Print setup in Django from your local printer to a PDF pseudo printer and you should see some variations in the way the document appears on screen. Physical page sizes may also vary and cause documents to transfer poorly from one machine to another, requiring sometimes global reformatting, particularly in the case of section titles, authors and comments. Another problem is that Django can o nly understand a printer setup for a printer that is actually installed on the computer that reads the document. So perhaps it would have been better to force the printers to read a Django document in the same way. This is a question I am still asking myself as well as whether this is actually possible... My own tendency is to first print to PDF and let the physical printer render the PDF rather than print directly. It saves paper... In the meantime, the printer setup options give you a lot of flexibility in rendering a document:

Note: If you changed a printer setup parameter, you can normally go back to the previous setting without harm unless you actually force Django to reformat the data. Of course you may want to actually reformat the data to adjust to the new page definition. The easiest way to do that is to select the Reformat section button under the Formatting options  button on the File toolbar.   

 

What is a template?

A template is an empty Django document pre-formatted in a certain way. Django uses hundreds of different variables, from fonts to instrument definitions to image locations, etc. You can save those options as a template to be used and reused so you don't have to recheck everything every time you create a new document. In fact the default way of creating a new Fandango document is by using a template. The Django installation provides a number of ready-made templates, but it is expected that you would prefer to create your own. Templates are easily created by selecting the Main Menu->File->Save as template command in an existing document. Django will then save the template based on the currently opened document and it will place it in the templates directory A list of available templates appears in the Templates sidebar to make it easier to review and access. That list consists of all the templates found in the templates directory on your disk.

It is recommended that you create your own templates, although several templates are shipped with the software. Those templates can be overwritten by a new installation and in that case you could lose your own customizations.

How to create a template file?

This is very easy if you start from document that contains the right elements for your needs, including layout, instrument definitions, etc. In that case, simply use the Save as template function under the file menu. There are however a few tricks to be aware of: after you save your template file, use it to create a new document and review the results. There are so many variables involved that it would be surprising if one or two of those did not get set to the wrong values, including print options, title page elements, instrument definitions etc. It is particularly important to use the Print preview tool.

Note: templates may be set up for different reasons: you may want all files by a certain composer using a solo instrument to look the same. You may want a template for Baroque lute with each of the possible diapasons tuning. You may again need a template for several groups of instruments. Defining the best template that suits your needs best is important and only you can set them up that way. Hopefully the software will help you do that, and hopefully the ready-made templates shipped with the software can be a good starting point.

Note: Any Fandango file can be turned into a template to be reused when creating a new document.

Document groups

Document groups are groups of files on your computer that have been indexed and that appear on the side panel under Document groups. The software ships with one document group called examples, but you are free to delete it or more importantly create your own.

The advantage of document groups is that you can open files directly from the editor without having to remember where they are on your disk. Not only that, but since the documents are indexed by section you can simply unfold the list of sections, double-click on one and open that document on the right section right away.

To create a document group, you use the File finder tool. The most important thing there is to select the Root directory where to start the search for Fandango files. Next you may want to limit the search to a certain format (jtz) and decide whether the program should search for more file sunder the root directory by checking the Recurses folders box. Once this is done, you will get a list of found documents that matches those criteria.

The next step is to click on the Build document group button. You will be prompted for a couple of actions:

You can create as many document groups as you want.

You can include as many files in a document group as you want by overriding the 200 limit in the File finder tool.

Deleting a document group will NOT delete its constituent files.

If you modify a file in a document group by adding a section, you should use the Re-index tool, accessible from the Document group side panel.

You can change a group's title from the Document group side panel at any time.

Because document groups relie heavily on their root directory path, if you want to add a document to it that does not share that root directory, you will be prompted to agree to change that document location on disk so it can be copied under the groups root directory.

You can export the group's index to an HTML format file. This may be useful if you need to check for consistency across multiple files or to copy over a batch of files from your computer to an HTML setting.

 

Creator
Alain Veylit
Modified
2016-11-14 14:40:12