Re: Sponsoring lilypond development Was Re: Score parts: instrument and duration

[Erik Sandberg]

On Thursday 18 August 2005 06.41, Trevor Baca wrote:
> No, no, not to worry: the SCORE native format .mus (not the same as
> the Finale .mus) *is* binary ... but there's this magic cleartext
> format ending in .pmx. From the SCORE UI you can turn *any* file into
> .pmx and read, parse, tweak to your heart's content; many SCORE users
> do it all the time and the documentation is complete.
>
> Once you've parsed / tweaked your .pmx, you can read the modified file
> back into SCORE directly. This .pmx format gives the ability to write
> extremely sophisticated editing macros (or tweak algorithmically, if
> you like).

This makes it hard for us to steal the SCORE experts right now. I think it's 
too difficult to do this kind of tweaks in lilypond right now, and the tweaks 
will break after each new version. (however, I don't know enough about 
internals to be absolutely certain about this.)

As you say, it could be useful to start a constructive dialogue with the SCORE 
folks, to 
(a) see what it would require (in terms of improved program design) to make 
them join us.
(b) get inspiration from their engraving expertise.

-- 
Erik