Re: Re: Typesetting music in ConTeXt

[Maurice Diamantini <diam@ensta.fr>]

Le 10 déc. 03, à 23:05, Henning Hraban Ramm a écrit :


> Am Mittwoch, 10.12.03, um 19:55 Uhr (Europe/Zurich) schrieb Willi 
> Egger:
>
>>>> : 3 - some package or binding to Lilypond (for writing music/midi 
>>>> and
>>>> : xml)
>>>> That would be very-very nice. By the way, are there any plans to
>>>> implement this feature (Lilypond binding) or, may be, some other 
>>>> ways to typeset
>>>> music in ConTeXt?
>>>
>>> if i'd time i'd write a metapost based engine ....
>>> with regards to lilypond, it depends on how latex dependent things 
>>> are
>>
>> Lilypond makes use of LaTeX only. Secondly be aware, that the 
>> software runs under Linux and under Cygwin.
>
> Hm, perhaps it would be possible to use some MusicTeX version? AFAIK 
> that's based on PlainTeX and could be compatible

I think there VERY much more work about lilypond that about Musi*TeX.
Also Lilipond has a modern approch and has a very good (*TeX) 
documentation.

 From http://lilypond.org/web/about/faq.html

	Will run on my computer?

	LilyPond is written for Unix, so it should run on any modern Unix 
variant,
     including Linux/GNU and MacOS X. There is also a MS Windows port, 
which uses
     the Cygwin environment.

     About other format:
     We have the following requirements:
	    • 	the format must use ASCII,
	    • 	it must be concise enough to type by hand,
	    • 	it must have a concise formal specification,
	    • 	it must be expressive enough to support many types of notation 
and
             printed formats.
     We believe that none of the existing formats address all these 
requirements.
     For example, MusicXML cannot be typed by hand, DARMS is limited in 
its
     application, ABC has no strict formal definition, and NIFF is 
binary.
     Nevertheless, this does not restrict you for using those formats: 
there are
     filters that convert from various formats to .ly


    Also there is some converter from lilypond to xml


So instead of Hans restarting a new Music Notation project, Hans should
make lilypond team using Context instead of LaTeX ;-)

Also I noted that :
- Lilypond is NOT a TeX macro, it only seems to be a
   dedicated (powerfull) subset of TeX (but allow input of TeX macro)
- Lilypond make use of TeX for page breaking and other stuff

So How to use Lilypond with ConTeXt?
1 - use Lilypond as an independant tool for building short
     (less or equal to one page) as pdf figure and
     include them in context as external figure
     (that is the way I'll do, because I'm not clever
     enought to do much more :-)
2 - make Lilypond team understand how ConTeXt is much
     more interesting as automatic formatic tool for
     creating pdf than LaTeX is!
3 - Allow using lilypond inside ConTeXt with
	  \startmusic
       \stopmusic
	I think this method would be much like typesetting
     chimical
     Hans has not to be developping a nex package, just
     using one that already exist

Also I think Lilipond could interest much more people
that the only short xTeX poeple user.
But Lilipond in not as easy to install (to many LaTeX
dependancy).

So the Lilypond tead could be interested by the new future
alternative ConTeXt-live CDROM distribution ;-)

ConTeXt-live (alias LaTeX-3: the only "nothing to install"
TeX based type system that allow to do :
- Mathematical,
- graphical (Metapost),
- Chimical,
- Musical
hight quality pdf documentation or web based presentation!!!



P.S.
I don't (yet) use  Lilypond, but I looked after some text based
Music notation for my wife.
I thought first to MusixTex (too eavy, too old) then the abc format
(which could be import as ps/pdf figure), then I found that
lilypond was closely related to TeX.
So it's probably the choice I'll do.


-- Maurice Diamantini