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

[Urs Liska]

Hi Joram,

some valid points here, but also some "beside the point":

Am 24.10.2015 um 22:11 schrieb Noeck:
> Hi Urs,
>
> possible advantages could be: a larger user base and maybe contributions
> from more (academic/professional/knowledgeable) people to the engraving
> quality of LilyPond. 

This is true, and one of the reasons why I think LilyPond should bother
with this idea in the first place. But that's not what I wanted to know.
I'm explicitly asking: "Why should a project to integrate LilyPond in
the MEI context also develop the ly2mei direction. Isn't mei2ly
sufficient?" And this question is explicitly asked from the MEI
perspective because that will be the perspective of the application and
particularly the people who will evaluate the application.

> Offering a high quality engraving solution for an
> already existing community. 

This is the obvious reason why my project is received so favourably. But
that's only affects the mei2ly direction, not ly2mei.

> And other synergy effects and perhaps
> funding. As the input is further disentangled from the output, users
> could use any input tool that supports MEI and still can get LilyPond
> output. That way we could have a GUI input method (which I presume
> exists for MEI) for free. That's what comes to my mind.

This is also correct and also beside the question or rather only
addressing the mei2ly issue.

But I think it is important to stress that even though the project is
initiated from the MEI perspective, that is from "adding LilyPond to
MEI" LilyPond will benefit a lot from it, not only from the aspect of
user base, potential use cases for our existing users etc. but also
technically, through improvements that have to be made as prerequisites
for mei2ly. And hopefully because such a project will be a "catalysator"
for a generally more active development.

>
> 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. 

This is an important point. If you are a common LilyPond user interested
in creating PDF scores then ly2mei doesn't add anything of value for
you. But what David said is not just a theoretical thing. LilyPond
scores can basically only be used with LilyPond. If you'd be able to
convert them to MEI you'd have the option of general-purpose XML
operations and any tools that the MEI community has or will produce, for
example analytical applications or storing the scores in common
databases or whatever. Particularly everything around the concept of
digital editions, that is: bringing your scores to a browser, making it
interactive, enhancing content with metadata etc.

This may not be something that you, Joram, are after, but something that
could be considered a rather common use case for LilyPond users.

Finally there is something that seems to be at the horizon when both
mei2ly and ly2mei exist at the same time. What I would very much like to
see is an integrated environment (e.g. in Frescobaldi) where you can
edit a score in .ly format, have instant preview through ly2mei2verovio,
possibly graphical content editing features through Verovio, and only in
the end use LilyPond for the graphical result.

Best
Urs

> Perhaps if
> freely available databases with MEI encoded music would exist, it could
> get interesting to convert these to ly for further tweaks.
>
> So, I support the idea but I see no personal advantages.
>
> Cheers,
> Joram
>
>
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