Tips and tricks

How to get rid of the message “Failed to update system registry” when opening Winscore on Windows Vista and Windows 7.
How to set up Windows file associations for use with Winscore.
How to set up display text fonts.
How to set up page sizes.
How to set up Winscore for use with multiple house styles.
How to install Winscore on 64-bit and non-English versions of Windows.
Documentation on symbols used in text strings

How to get rid of the message “Failed to update system registry” when opening Winscore on Windows Vista and Windows 7.
When you open Winscore on Win Vista or Windows 7 you invariably get the message “Failed to update system registry” which is both annoying and also stops the mechanism for double clicking on a Winscore-associated file to load it into the program. To make sure this message doesn’t appear you need to run Winscore as an administrator. Open the Windows Explorer by holding down # and E simultaneously (where # equals the Windows key usually between Ctrl and Alt on the left side of the keyboard).  Go to the C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE folder and find the WSCORE.EXE file (please see the section How to set up Windows file associations for use with Winscore below for details on how to file extensions if they are not displayed). Right-click on this file and select the option “Run as administrator”. Winscore will open and usually asked you to retype your serial number. Subsequently it should open normally.

How to set up Windows file associations for use with Winscore
When you install Winscore it automatically sets up the .MUS extension as a registered file type. This means that the files’ icon changed to the Winscore icon, but more importantly that you can doubleclick on the file to open it up in the program. However you will probably want to use other file extensions with Winscore, and these you must register with Windows yourself. For instance you may want to use .PGE or .PAG for page files, or .PTS for parts. What’s more, in it’s default state Windows hides file extensions and this can cause a lot of confusion when using Winscore.
Setting Windows to show file extensions.
Open the Windows Explorer by holding down # and E simultaneously (where # equals the Windows key usually between Ctrl and Alt on the left side of the keyboard). From the top menu select Tools | Folder Options (Win XP or earlier), or Organize | Folder and search options (Win Vista and 7). Select the View tab and uncheck the option “Hide extensions to known file types”. Click OK to save.
Registering new file types with Winscore
Using Windows XP and earlier
From the Windows Explorer menu select Tools | Folder Options. Select the File Types tab and select New about halfway down. Type in the file extension you want to register (for instance PGE [don’t type the dot]). Click the Advanced button and find WScore Document\ in the Associated File Type listbox. Select it and click OK. Repeat the process for each file type you want to register with Winscore.
Using Windows Vista and Windows 7
The functionality for registering file types found in Win XP and earlier is missing in Vista and 7. In order to set up file associations in these versions of Windows you need to install additional software. It is recommended that you download and install File Type Doctor from Creative Element Power Tools. Once this is installed, open it and check the option “Edit file type associations”. Then click the Accept button. From the Windows Explorer go to the C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE folder and right-click on the file MOZART.MUS. You will see a new option in the list “Edit File Type...”. Click on this to open up the File Type Doctor. Unfortunately the Winscore installation sets this file type up wrongly in Win Vista and 7. In the Actions listbox on the right-hand side select (User Choice Override). Click the Remove button below and select Yes to remove this Action (It removes all other actions too.) Now click the Add button. Type open as the name for the action. Click the Browse button below and select C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE\WSCORE.EXE. In the command-line arguments field below this type \dde . Check the option “Send DDE message to application”. This opens up some more fields. In Message type [open(“%1”)] . In Application type WScore and in Topic type System . Click the Accept button. Now click the Add button to create a second action. Follow the same steps as for open above but this time type print for the name of the action and [print(“%1”)] for the DDE Message. Finally click Add to create a third action. Follow the same steps as for open above but this time type printto for the name of the action and [printto("%1","%2","%3","%4")] for the DDE Message. You will also want to set up the Winscore file icon, so click on the Change button as the top right. Click on Browse and find C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE\WSCORE.EXE. Click OK to select the first icon in the list.
For other file types that you may want to use with Winscore first check that they are listed on the left-hand side of the File Type Doctor window. If they’re not you will either have to create them by clicking the NEW button at the bottom or by right-clicking on a file of that type from Windows Explorer and selecting “Edit File Type...” as you did for MOZART.MUS. Once the extension exists in the File Type list select it and click the Link button at the bottom. Select “Link this extension to an existing file type” and from the combo box below it select “MUS file”. Click the Accept button and your new file type should behave the same way as for MUS files.

How to set up display text fonts
Winscore uses Postscript Type 1 fonts for screen display and printing and not Truetype fonts which are more common within Windows. It is set up to use the Adobe Font Basics library of which a typical Postscript laser printer contains the first 35 fonts. In order to display these fonts on Winscore’s screen display you must physically have the fonts on your computer. You can either purchase the complete Adobe Font Basics library or just the individual fonts that you think you will need. If showing the true fonts on the screen is not important to you, you can use Winscore without any of them and instead use the included generic stick font which follows the character spacing of the true fonts. Using this method you will only see the true fonts when you print to the printer.
Installing the Adobe Font Basics library
If you have purchased the full library, run the installation program which comes with it. This should set up the fonts correctly so that they display in Winscore.
Setting up individual Basics fonts
If you own, or have purchased, individual Basics fonts, you will need to follow these instructions to get them to display in Winscore. If necessary create a folder  C:\PSFONTS and two subfolders C:\PSFONTS\AFM and C:\PSFONTS\PFM. Copy the font’s PFB to C:\PSFONTS, its AFM to C:\PSFONTS\AFM and its PFM to C:\PSFONTS\PFM. If these folders already existed on your machine make sure only PFB files appear in C:\PSFONTS, only AFM files appear in C:\PSFONTS\AFM and only PFM files appear in C:\PSFONTS\PFM. If you are using Win XP (32-bit) you will need to install the font utility Adobe Type Manager (even though it is supposedly unecessary). The Light version of this is available free from Adobe (click on the link here or on the Links page to go to the site). Once installed, Add the fonts you want to use in Winscore to ATM. If you are using Win Vista or Win 7 or any 64-bit version of Windows it is not necessary to install ATM, and indeed inadvisable. All you should need to do in these operating systems is select the font’s PFM file(s) in C:\PSFONTS\PFM that you need and drag them to C:\WINDOWS\FONTS, or, alternatively, right-click on your selection and hit the Install option from the ensuing menu. They should then automatically install.
Setting up fonts not included in the Basics library.
Please follow all the steps in the previous section (Setting up individual Basics fonts). Make a temporary copy of the font’s AFM to C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE. Doubleclick on the font utility FONTCONV.EXE found in the same folder. Type the name of the AFM file. Select a number for the font between 55 and 93 (the first 54 slots are normally reserved for the Basics library, but you can override them if you want). Make sure that this font number is not already in use by going to C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE\FONTLIB and checking for an FMT file with the same number. If it exists delete it. Once the FONTCONV has finished successfully a new FMT file will have been saved to FONTLIB for the new font number. Delete the temporary AFM from C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE. ps. there are still a small number of fonts which don’t display in Winscore. If you come up against this problem please follow the next section
Turning off Postscript screen display.
If you don’t want to show the true fonts on the screen, open Winscore and type PREF (Enter). At the top right of the Preference dialog window select NO to Pstscrpt Screen Fonts. Click OK to close the window. Then type Z (Enter) to recompute the screen. Now all screen fonts will be displayed using the included generic stick font.

How to set up page sizes
The horizontal print area in Winscore is divided into 200 units. Each unit is equivalent to 0.0375 inches which gives you a total width of 7.5 inches or approximately 19 centimeters.  When you need a shorter width than this it’s easy to set up a shorter stave. However if you need a wider stave, for instance if you are preparing an A3 size score, you will need to print at a larger size to get the wider stave. If you’ve been given specific sizes for staves, page heights and text fonts by your publisher, you will need to recalculate these sizes at Winscore size 1 so that they appear at the correct size when you print. This can be a time-consuming business. A simplified way to calculate these is to use the free utility ScorCalc which is available from the Users page or by clicking here. This little program automatically works out the correct sizes and values to set in Winscore and tells you the print size to use to get the sizes you want. As well as calculating page height (HS) and stave size, it will also calculate user definable text sizes.

How to set up Winscore for use with multiple house styles
If you work for more than one publisher you may need to have access to multiple house styles. Although achieving house style in Winscore involves a combination of different elements - using templates and macros, setting fonts as well as preferences - it is useful to have access to multiple preference files for the basis of this.
When you type PREF from the Winscore command line the program opens the file PREF.DAT which is resident in the C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE\SCORLIB folder. Amongst other things the preference file allows you to specify the font and symbol library folders that the program will use. Therefore it is possible both to have multiple font and symbol libraries, and also to have multiple PREF.DAT files to control them.
Setting up multiple font and symbol libraries.
First make a copy of the existing font and symbol library folders C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE\FONTLIB and C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE\SCORLIB. Make any necessary adjustments to the original libraries. If you need to set up different fonts you will need to delete the existing FMT files for the font number you want to use so that FONTCONV can write the new files which it does automatically to the C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE\FONTLIB. If you want to edit the symbol library the Winscore Draw function opens and saves files directly to and from the C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE\SCORLIB folder. (Please follow the Winscore documentation for details on how to edit symbols). Once the necessary changes have been made, open Windows Explorer and drag the folders to a new location. For instance if you’re working for publisher A create a folder called PBA, and drag the library folders so they become subfolders of PBA. Finally move or rename the copies of your original folders back to where they were.
Setting up multiple PREF.DAT files.
Your PREF.DAT file has to reside in the C:\”PROGRAM FILES”\WINSCORE\SCORLIB folder. So in order to utilize different sets of preferences you must make copies of PREF.DAT and edit its contents. Using the publisher example above make a copy of PREF.DAT and call it PREF.PBA. Open the file in Windows Notepad by right-clicking on it and selecting Open With... Select Notepad from the list. Edit the line starting SYMB so that it reads C:\PBA\SCORLIB and edit the line starting FONT so that it reads C:\PBA\FONTLIB. Make any other adjustments to the settings in the file, Save and Close Notepad. If you want to use the PBA preferences with Winscore, rename PREF.DAT to PREF.DEF (default settings) and rename PREF.PBA to PREF.DAT. Similarly if you want to revert to your default libraries rename PREF.DAT to PREF.PBA and rename PREF.DEF ro PREF.DAT. Open Winscore and type PREF to check that the correct settings are displayed.

How to install Winscore on 64-bit and non-English versions of Windows.
Winscore has a hard-coded program path - C:\PROGRAM FILES\WINSCORE. You must install the program to this folder otherwise it will not run. 32-bit versions of Windows in English automatically install to this location. In non-English versions of Windows the Program Files folder is often translated to the language being used. In this case you must create a special folder C:\PROGRAM FILES and then change the program folder location during installation to C:\PROGRAM FILES\WINSCORE. In 64-bit Windows, the installation program will often default to installing Winscore in the C:\PROGRAM FILES (X86)\WINSCORE as it is a 32-bit program. If this happens you must change the program folder location during installation to C:\PROGRAM FILES\WINSCORE.

Documentation on symbols used in text strings
One thing that is not yet documented in the Winscore Help files are the symbol numbers for music symbols used in text strings (namely various note values for metronome marks and accidentals for note names). You may need to edit these to match the symbols that appear elsewhere in a score.
Symbol library numbers from 2000 - 2999 contain many of the symbols from pre-Postscript Score days. The symbol numbers used in text strings are contained within this range and are as follows:

All these can be edited in the usual way, but make sure their positions are not changed, otherwise they may not occupy the proper space with other text.