The following is a draft of the file quality guidelines.
File formatting
- Normally scanned scores published scores should normally be black and white PDFs (not color or grayscale) with a uniform (and reasonable) virtual page size.
- A score PDF can contain color covers, even if the internal pages are black and white.
- Pages with photos can be in mixed black and white and color/grayscale as appropriate.
- A normal scan can be in color (or partly in color) if the coloration has actual significance (e.g., where some form of unconventional color-based notation is used).
- Each PDF should normally contain one complete physical volume (a single score or part).
- Each score PDF should normally be complete, and not by movement/section, unless the movement or section was published as a separate volume.
- Even multiple physical volumes separated for the sake of binding may be joined together as a single PDF, so long as there is a continuous set of page numbers (that is, if the two physical items are meant to be read as one volume). Otherwise, they should be kept separate.
- Each part PDF should represent one part in the music which is meant to be read linearly. For instance, if a part booklet is for Flute 1, and has pages numbered 1 to 10, that should be a single PDF; there should then be a second PDF for a Flute 2 part (with its own pages numbered from 1 to 10) and so on. Reading from the beginning to the end of a PDF should take you from the beginning to the end of the piece of music, not from one instrument's part to another.
- Exceptionally, for manuscript scans which contain multiple parts in a disorganized format, it may be OK to keep parts together.
- Each page should correspond to one page, and the pages should be in their natural order.
- No PDF should be added in "folding" format with two facing pages.
- Even when scanning the rare physical documents which were printed with facing pages on the same sheet, the PDF should reformatted to have pages that follow the logical order.
