and I guess you might want the attachment I promised.

I would put slurs on the melismas.

Also, could you set the opening by the priest to music as well? That would be nice.

Very good–looking typesetting. Good job.

Ben, your work is looking beautiful ! Keep it up!

Latest progress. Comments on anything and everything concerning the looks and content of this PDF would be greatly appreciated. BTW, I've switched over to Scribus now, so the text is close enough to the music, and I have a ton more power too, which is really cool once you figure out how to use it.

If you see anything out of place or looks weird or non-standard, speak up. I want to know!

Thank you, Chonak!!! Latest doc attached.

1) Hmmm... The meinrad font doesn't have those, unless I'm missing something.
2) Yes, I'm aware they are out of line with each other. I'll be fixing those once I finish just getting everything in the document. As you said, this is just a draft.
3) Thanks!
4) Hmm...
5) Hmmm... Meinrad also doesn't do ties or slurs, afaik
6) I guess I should say I was, for constancy across the various books, especially for priests who are starting to sing more of their parts. Not to mention I like it...I'm thinking about also making a neume edition, which shouldn't be to much more work once I finish this.
7a) Whoops! Thanks for the catch!
7b) Yes, the missal (pp 1461) actually calls it the "Priest's prayer". I tried to keep the same headings and layout, just adding music. Anyone have a better name?
8) I assume I should do this with all of the new sections?
9) What page are you finding this on?

5) I seriously considered musescore over the font method, but their methods for entering more than one word on a note are sometimes difficult, and it's often difficult to manage the notes when there gets to be many words under one single note. But if it were something with less reciting notes, I would have used it without a second thought for this big of a project.
8) I'll be doing that from now on. Thanks for the tip!
9) See that now. Thanks.
10) Wouldn't it stay on the reciting note? Or would it be better to do a quarter note since it's the only word there on the reciting note?
11) Are you saying that many of the staffs should be open ended, without a bar line on the end? edit: I checked, and I guess that's what the missal does. I'll do that in my next update.
12) Hmm... don't know why I did that. I must have had a flex or something there, then took it out.
13) Yes, good idea.

Ben:

I have to confess, I'm having a bit of trouble envisioning this book as being sufficiently useful thus far as to justify anyone's actually wanting to purchase a hard copy. I simply have never been to any church where they would want to limit themselves to the example intentions that are given in the Missal, still less to do so often enough that it would make sense to buy a whole book about it. So I would suggest both of the following:

1. Offer concrete guidelines for how to set new invocations to the same tones. Where should the flex and mediant be? When do you start the ending cadence? Assume that the people who will be reading this are not familiar with terms such as "flex" and "pointing."

2. Write a bunch of intentions (or find them somewhere, keeping copyright in mind), and set them to the same tones. Divvy them up either according to the four-part schema given in the GIRM (for the needs of the Church; for public authorities and the salvation of the whole world; for those burdened by any kind of difficulty; for the local community), or according to some other topical arrangement that makes sense. It will, naturally, be important not to focus on your own agenda by limiting the resource to only intentions that you think people should be offering ("For a restoration of altar rails, let us pray to the Lord" ;-), but rather to include a wide range of things that other people might want: for vocations, for the jobless, for the homeless, for immigrants, for an election, for a child(ren) baptized at this Mass, for the candidates and catechumens, for people affected by a natural disaster, for addicts, etc., etc.

If all that sounds like a lot of work, well, it probably would be. As I said, I'm just not sure I foresee much in the way of widespread or long-term usefulness for a resource on the Prayers of the Faithful that is limited to what is given in the Missal.

Three final points: (1) in the simple tone Priest's Prayer, the Amen should be on C, not B; (2) please put the Table of Contents before any preface and introduction; (3) given your otherwise strict fidelity to the texts set forth in the Missal, is there any reason you have ignored the responses for each formulary that the Missal provides? In General Formula I, for instance, it is "Grant this, Almighty God," where instead you give "Lord, have mercy" or "Lord, hear our prayer."

Ok, here's my latest draft, with the appendix being on PDF page no. 52 (book page 42).

Any ideas for other content to go in the appendix? Right now I have both creeds, and simple instructions on how to point new petitions to the tone.

As usual, any layout tips or other tips are greatly appreciated, particularly in the table of contents, which I just finished updating.

I recommend to indent both options and add a suitable header above the first one as well:

e.g., "For a lay member of the faithful or a non-ordained religious:"

Otherwise the reader's tendency will be to proceed through the first option for (4b) and then be surprised by the second option. It might be good to start a new page before the first option of (4b).

A few general and specific remarks:

1. Margins are too small in the introductory text.

2. Proofread, proofread, proofread. A few things I noticed:

a. Correct straight quote (tick mark) to curly quote in the ToC, "Apostles' Creed"; same on p. 54; also throughout the "How to Apply New Texts" section.
b. On pp. vii and viii, the abbreviation for "page" should be "p.," not "pp." If you mean "on page 1416 and the following," then the abbreviation is "pp. 1416 et seq." or "pp. 1416ff." More importantly, since not all missals are paginated identically, this is not a sufficient reference to identify the source.
c. On p. viii, you have "reverenence" instead of "reverence."
d. On p. 4, you are missing the word "us" in "that the Lord may graciously receive us as a sacrifice."
e. Wherever you have numerical spans -- for instance at the bottom of p. vi, "nos. 69-71," and the top of p. 30, "nos. 1-2" -- the hyphen should be replaced with an en dash.

3. Do not underline urls (p. viii). This looks like you exported it directly from MSWord. If you can't click on it, it should not be underlined.

4. Make sure that you avoid page turns in the middle of a phrase, such as on pp. 15-16, "that what is given in time may {turn page} become a reward in eternity," pp. 19-20, "turn to you with all their heart, so {turn page} that whatever they dare to ask...", pp. 25-26, et alibi.

5. If you are not printing the name placeholder "N." in red, I think it is customary (and easier to read) to put it in italics.

6. I would move the section on pointing texts to the introduction, and eliminate the two creeds as non-germane to the book (this would leave you with no need for an appendix).

7. You need to go back through the entire thing and add flexes and mediants in appropriate places. As it stands, you have things like "let our prayer to the Lord be all the more insistent, that all of us, and the whole multitude of the baptized, together with the entire world, may come to share more abundantly in this" and "-selves gathered here, that, as God does not cease to sustain us with the things of this life, we may know how to use them in such a way that we may hold even now to the things that endure for ev-" all set to a neverending reciting tone. I cannot imagine that this is very conducive to graceful recitation, nor to comprehension of the text. (This will also give you something more interesting to talk about in the introduction to pointing texts.)

8. Speaking of which, I did not find the tone of voice of the "How to Apply New Texts" section to be quite fitting. For one thing, I would change the title to "Applying the Intercession Tone to New Texts." For another, colloquialisms like "come in handy" and sentence fragments like "Which would then be sung as such" (an ungrammatical use of the word "such," too) should be reworked.

9. For the Preface, a few comments:

a. "Two-fold" should be "twofold." Also, it is confusing to have a "firstly" but no "secondly." Not until I get to the end of the sentence do I realize that I should have interpreted the "but also" as introducing the second purpose.
b. You should not begin three consecutive paragraphs with "I".
c. Where you mention Bp. Morlino, you have "importance" twice in a row. At least one of these (preferably both, as "important" is one of the most overused adjectives in English, along with "interesting") should be replaced with something more meaningful.
d. "Assist you bring" is not grammatical. "God Bless you" has one capital too many.

Hope these remarks are helpful. Best of luck to you, Ben --

One more question. Would anyone go for a neume edition? I could get one out without too much work if someone wanted it.