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Re: MusicXML


From: Joshua Haberman
Subject: Re: MusicXML
Date: 28 Feb 2003 17:47:05 -0800

On Fri, 2003-02-28 at 15:36, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> 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.

An explanation for why you say this would be an answer to my original
question.

>   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.

Would you use a compiler that required you to first run your source file
through an external program that translates your program into a
different language with vastly different semantics?  Would you feel that
you can count on every construct in the target language being translated
correctly?

Even assuming this translation can happen in a robust way, in this case
the target language (mudela) is changing all the time; what if the
converter becomes unmaintained?  It will no longer be usable.

Surely you can appreciate the different between native support and
support that requires an external converter.

> > 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"?

I was thinking about trying sometime, but I didn't know how it would fit
architecturally into lily; I posted my question hoping to gain this
information.  I really have no idea how lilypond is put together (even
though I have used it some, and contributed two scores to the mutopia
project).  I am especially unclear on the division between TeX, C++, and
Guile.  I was hoping to find out if lily's architecture would make it
easy to write another language front-end or not.

Josh




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