Re: Google Summer of Code - Ideas List, please discuss

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Reinhold Kainhofer
<address@hidden> wrote:
> It is much easier to export just the music contents (in scheme, just
> using the output of the iterators), but that solves only part of the
> problem. To be able to provide solutions for composers in the
> professional music publishing world, layout information is essential in
> the MusicXML export.
>
> Currently, if you are using LilyPond, you are locked in to LilyPond. If
> any composer writes a piece in lilypond, it's practically impossible to
> find a publisher. The publishers usually only accept finished (i.e.
> layout done!) Finale/Sibelius/SCORE files, and probably MusicXML. But if
> the LilyPond users sends them the MusicXML of the finished LilyPond
> file, the publisher will have just the raw data and needs to do all the
> layout themselves again (and proably reject the files)...
>
> So, just a basic MusicMXL export functionality is not able to fulfill
> all the needs of the users. To be able to compete in the professional
> market, LilyPond also needs to export the positioning (and MusicXML is
> moving more and more into that direction, now also including full audio
> support). MusicXML 1.0 was just about the musical contents, MusicXML 2.0
> added mainly layout information, and MusicXML 3.0 adds lots of audio
> information.
>
> Also notice that many MusicXML viewer are not able to lay out the
> musical contents themselves, but depend on the positioning information
> in the MusicXML file.

Does that really work? Each software has different fonts; unless
symbol dimensions are standardized, the results will still require a
lot of postprocessing, won't they?

What happens if you take a fully formatted file from Finale and load
it into Sibelius via the musicxml route, and the reverse? Is anyone
able to post the before and after PDFs of such a transition?

-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen