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Re: Lilypond to MusicXML (was: Re: New Sibelius to LilyPond conversion s


From: Michael Good
Subject: Re: Lilypond to MusicXML (was: Re: New Sibelius to LilyPond conversion suite)
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 18:06:01 +0000 (UTC)
User-agent: Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/)

You can get started with a reasonable MusicXML import project for as little as 
a US $10 investment in Finale NotePad. For a MusicXML export project, just 
download a free Finale demo. Recordare does not make any money from either the 
sales or downloads of MakeMusic products.

The Finale products offer the closest thing that MusicXML has to a reference 
implementation. They may not be free or open source, but since you do not need 
the full versions of the software, it is far from a major investment. If the 
open source community wants a free and open source reference implementation, 
the MuseScore, Zong, and LilyPond projects would be natural candidates for 
this work.

Checking the musical results of a MusicXML exporter is neither difficult nor 
costly. For best results it would be good to check with a free download of the 
Sibelius demo as well as the Finale demo.

However, if you try to export LilyPond's formatting, checking the results does 
become more complicated. It is only a select few programs like the Legato 
Sheet Music Viewer (fka musicRAIN) that interpret and display full MusicXML 
formatting, including note spacing. Those applications are indeed expensive. 
But perhaps Legato would be interested in cooperating in this effort, 
especially given the interest expressed in the issue tracker from one of their 
potential customers.

Reinhold, if you feel an explanation on the MusicXML list is missing a crucial 
element, please feel free to follow up! In some cases, I fear that what you 
want to see from the format is at odds with MusicXML's use of selective 
encoding. Selective encoding allows applications and scores to skip the export 
of information that is not applicable to their needs. This design helps with 
adoption of MusicXML export, but does place additional burdens on MusicXML 
import.

Interchange format design is full of tradeoffs like this. We may not have made 
the optimal tradeoff in every case. Given MusicXML's success, we seem to have 
done well more often than not.

For those who are interested in more MusicXML discussions, feel free to join 
the MusicXML mailing list. Signup is at:

http://www.recordare.com/lists#MusicXML

Reinhold has made excellent contributions to the MusicXML community with his 
participation on the MusicXML list and with his test suite. We welcome more 
contributions from the LilyPond community. But we would prefer it if you 
refrain from calling our company "sleazy" and "bad".

Best regards,

Michael Good
Recordare LLC





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