Re: MusicXML

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

address@hidden writes:
> > > Is there any chance Lilypond will ever be able to take MusicXML as
> > > input?  How hard would it be, and how would it fit into lilypond's
> > > architecture?

> > I've written a MusicXML to Lilypond converter, it is at
> > http://www.nongnu.org/xml2ly.

> I'm sure you've put a lot of thought and effort into this converter, but
> my feeling is that as long as this kind of transcoding is external to
> lily, MusicXML users will be second-class citizens.  Some things will
> work, some things won't.

> Perhaps an unspoken part of my question was "do the lilypond developers
> care to support this format?"  Really supporting the format would mean
> more than finding the closest mudela equivalent for every MusicXML
> directive.

There is no good technical reason to read MusicXML directly into
lilypond, so I prefer to keep it outside.  As for the "lilypond
developers" opinion: I've personally spent a lot of time writing
convertors (etf2ly, pmx2ly, musedata2ly, etc.) only to find out that
noone uses them.

The fact that you don't seem interested in xml2ly, which to me seems
useful and an entirely reasonable solution, affirms my belief that I
should not put my effort in pleasing mythical MusicXML users, but
rather people that actually use Lilypond and need certain
improvements.

> It seems that
> supporting this format would benefit everyone involved.

MusicXML is neither a particularly advanced or complicated format. Why
don't you try implementing support yourself and "scratch your own
itch"?

-- 

Han-Wen Nienhuys   |   address@hidden   |   http://www.cs.uu.nl/~hanwen