duong@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (ROBOCOP) (12/12/90)
HI... I am looking for a music typesetting program in Troff format, or LaTex or TeX format...etc...which could print out the music scores..Does such program exist..?? if yes, please show me where can I get one.. Thanks in advance to whom who responses.. duc
fingerhu@ircam.fr (Michel Fingerhut) (12/12/90)
Da capo: 1. "music: a troff preprocessor for printing music scores" -- send email to ef@cs.nott.ac.uk. That's the person who sends it. 2. "MusicTeX : Using TeX to write polyphonic or instrumental music" ftp from qed.rice.edu.
elkies@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) (12/15/90)
In article <1990Dec12.141603.7773@ircam.fr> fingerhu@ircam.fr (Michel Fingerhut) writes: >Da capo: > >1. "music: a troff preprocessor for printing music scores" -- > send email to ef@cs.nott.ac.uk. That's the person who sends it. Has anybody done this successfully? It looked interesting, so I e-mailed to ef@cs.nott.ac.uk a few weeks ago, and I have yet to get a reply. This *could* indicate that ef@cs.nott.ac.uk is swamped with such requests as a result of the previous annoucement to comp.music, but in that case there would usually be a "no more requests please, we're swamped" message posted to this newsgroup... >2. "MusicTeX : Using TeX to write polyphonic or instrumental music" > ftp from qed.rice.edu. This I did manage to get, and set up with the help of the local gurus. Unfortunately it only confirmed my guess that, while TeX is an excellent paradigm for a music notator, you don't want to actually build your notator on top of TeX as a set of macros. (That is, for practical use in printing music; for a master's thesis, which the original MuTeX was, it's a fine CS project.) Now if the visual quality of the output had been as high as we're used to with TeX, I might not mind having to learn how to translate a score into a convoluted sequence of arcane MusicTeX macros. But, after examining the printouts from a few of the demos, I don't believe it's worth the effort. Not only is the spacing amateurish (and the bizarre notion of shrinking the accidentals when the spacing gets too narrow doesn't help either), but the fonts themselves seem half-baked. While it's true that a convincing treble or C clef takes some work to design, surely making a quarter-note centered on the correct staff line or space, and with the stem tangent to the notehead, is a trivial METAFONT exercise; yet neither the noteheads nor the stems are properly aligned (all the noteheads are noticeably too high on the staff, and all the stems cut through their noteheads). I can only hope that the troff preprocessor does a significantly better job... --Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu) Department of Mathematics, Harvard University
tgaucha@watcsc.waterloo.edu (Terry Gauchat) (12/16/90)
In article <34547@netnews.upenn.edu> duong@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (ROBOCOP) writes: } I am looking for a music typesetting program in Troff format, or LaTex or }TeX format...etc...which could print out the music scores..Does such }program exist..?? if yes, please show me where can I get one.. And I'd like one to run on IBM DOS. With Postscipt or HP output?
mjs@hpfcso.HP.COM (Marc Sabatella) (12/18/90)
>>1. "music: a troff preprocessor for printing music scores" -- >> send email to ef@cs.nott.ac.uk. That's the person who sends it. > >Has anybody done this successfully? It looked interesting, >so I e-mailed to ef@cs.nott.ac.uk a few weeks ago, and >I have yet to get a reply. I eventually got a reply, and even sources. There is the generic pic version and a version that requires the Sonata font. The former is what I wanted, but I gave up on it after a week or two of hacking. The output quality wasn't the problem (although it is not nearly as nice as the Sonata output), at least not after I hacked up the font descriptors to center the noteheads better, etc. It simply failed basic formatting tasks like lining up left hand and right hand parts rhythmically. I have hard copy of the "manual" from the Sonata version, and it appears to line things up properly. If you have Sonata, and can get hold of the sources from Eric (keep trying), it is an excellent package. >>2. "MusicTeX : Using TeX to write polyphonic or instrumental music" >> ftp from qed.rice.edu. > >This I did manage to get, and set up with the help of the local gurus. >Unfortunately it only confirmed my guess that, while TeX is an excellent >paradigm for a music notator, you don't want to actually build your >notator on top of TeX as a set of macros. (That is, for practical use >in printing music; for a master's thesis, which the original MuTeX was, >it's a fine CS project.) Now if the visual quality of the output >had been as high as we're used to with TeX, I might not >mind having to learn how to translate a score into a convoluted >sequence of arcane MusicTeX macros. But, after examining the >printouts from a few of the demos, I don't believe it's worth >the effort. Not only is the spacing amateurish (and the bizarre >notion of shrinking the accidentals when the spacing gets too narrow >doesn't help either), but the fonts themselves seem half-baked. We have MuTeX running here and it doesn't suffer the font problems you mention. I think our "local guru" here designed the fonts himself. If you take the time to do that, it should be acceptable. I haven't seen enough output to know anything about problems with spacing. It didn't do multiple staves, so I gave up on it. I would look into MusicTex, but I've got Notator for the Atari ST now, and I'm very happy with it. For the person who asked about PC packages, there is Dr. T's Copyist, Encore, Score, and a few I've seen advertised but know nothing about (Laser Music Processor looks intersting - and relatively inexpensive). There was a comparative review in Keyboard magazine last summer (July?) - although it is somewhat dated, it should serve to get you started. Marc