Re: Reasons why a LilyPond-to-MEI conversion should be developed

[David Kastrup]

Noeck <address@hidden> writes:

> Me personally, I don't see the point in creating MEI files. I like the
> LilyPond input language. It is a concise and human readable
> representation of the music. I can use version control (git). I don't
> see what MEI would improve for me. I guess MEI is rather less readable
> and auto-generated ly code likely, too (therefore I don't use Denemo).
> My desired output format is pdf – so I have what I need. Perhaps if
> freely available databases with MEI encoded music would exist, it
> could get interesting to convert these to ly for further tweaks.

The main point of some stupid straightforward XML-based format is that
computer-based transformations are readily possible.  For MusicXML,
there are filters converting a "stream-based" (or what it was called)
representation into a time-based one, implemented with straightforward
XML tools.  In LilyPond, we need iterators in one direction and don't
have anything for the reverse direction.

The only computer-based tool with a reliable understanding of LilyPond
syntax is LilyPond itself.

> So, I support the idea but I see no personal advantages.

It's like PostScript vs PDF.  Nobody wants to write PDF code if he can
write PostScript instead.  On the other hand, nobody wants to write an
interpreter for PostScript if he can write one for PDF instead.

Look which of the two is more prevalent these days.

-- 
David Kastrup