[linux-audio-dev] lilypond and GUIDO (WAS: Project XEMO, MusicXML) (fwd)

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Subject: [linux-audio-dev] lilypond and GUIDO (WAS: Project XEMO, MusicXML) (fwd)
From: Michael Droettboom (mdboom_AT_peabody.jhu.edu)
Date: Thu Nov 15 2001 - 04:23:27 EET


I have an extended comparison of GUIDO and Mudela as part of my Master's
thesis-in-progress. It exists in an earlier form at:

http://mambo.peabody.jhu.edu/~mdboom/format.pdf

I must warn all readers, however, that this document is over a year old
and is no longer very current and may contain factual errors. Let's
not start a flame war, because I believe both languages have their
place, but I thought this might provide more food for thought and
discussion. For my own work, GUIDO was the clear choice, but your
needs/mileage my vary.

Excerpt from the conclusions of the revised version:

For an end user typing in music directly, Mudela's concise syntax can
be learned easily. GUIDO's more verbose syntax can be cumbersome at
times. The human issues of entering the representation manually,
however, was not a strong consideration for the present system.

The availability of software tools is also an important factor.
Presently, the freely available GUIDO tools are not fully functioning,
while LilyPond is stable and quickly approaching the level of
professional-quality output. I have not evaluated the commercial
GUIDO tools, but regardless of their design or usefulness, it may be
problematic to embark on an open-source project whose only possible
interchange is with a commercial product.

From the point-of-view of an implementor, GUIDO is a much more elegant
and practical language than Mudela. It is clearly defined and its
design ensures language stability even as new extensions are added.
The available GUIDO parser kit is well designed and easy to use by
developers.

Clearly, choosing a musical representation language for any project is
a difficult task. In the end, for the OMI project, we decided not to
decide: to ensure that the OMI system was extensible enough that to
new output formats could be added as easily as possible. However,
GUIDO is gradually winning over as our language-of-choice for the
long-term archiving of scores. GUIDO's superior design should ensure
that it receives wide-acceptance, but until then leaving OMI as open
as possible seems to be the best solution.

Regards,
Mike

-- 
Michael Droettboom
mdboom_AT_peabody.jhu.edu
410.625.7596

Computer Music Research Peabody Conservatory of Music Johns Hopkins University

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 23:15:13 -0200 From: Nelson Posse Lago <lago_AT_that.com.br> Reply-To: linux-audio-dev_AT_music.columbia.edu To: linux-audio-dev_AT_music.columbia.edu Subject: [linux-audio-dev] lilypond and GUIDO (WAS: Project XEMO, MusicXML)

On Wed, Nov 14 2001 at 08:28:54am -0500, Karl MacMillan wrote: > [...] Supporting basic music notation is fairly straightforward, but > providing all of the functionality to support complex, modern notation is > difficult. See Guido for a format that does a good job at the harder parts > of notation - http://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/AFS/CM/GUIDO/

Well, the advanced examples are all Bach, so I'm not sure if by "modern" notation you mean 20th-century notation. If not, how do you feel this format compares to the format used by lilypond? After all, lilypond at least has a free parser/processor that generates good quality output on linux...

See ya, Nelson


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