Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!gatech!udel!mmdf From: @utrcgw.utc.com:mark@ardnt1 (mark) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.applications Subject: Re: Music Publishing Software Message-ID: <51965@nigel.ee.udel.edu> Date: 26 Apr 91 18:03:41 GMT Sender: mmdf@ee.udel.edu Lines: 96 I am forwarding this for someone here at work. Replies or questions can be sent directly to him or to me and I'll forward them to him. --Mark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Mark Stucky | Email: | | United Technologies Research Center | mark%ardnt1@utrcgw.utc.com | | East Hartford, CT. | mast%utrc@utrcgw.utc.com | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ on Fri, 26 Apr 91 13:14 EDT, "William R(ay) Brohinsky" said: Mark, please forward this: In article <20949@cbmvax.commodore.com> Dave Haynie writes: Dave> I'm trying to track down a program capable of doing a decent job of Dave> desktop music publishing. It doesn't have to actually play anything, Dave> just let the user write music and get hot looking printouts (hopefully Dave> publication quality, PostScript if possible) as reasonably as I can Dave> with text and graphics in ProPage or PageStream. Anyone know if such Dave> a puppy exists on the Amiga yet? Many thanks in advance, email Dave> or post the answers as y'all see fit. Loren J. Rittle responds: Loren> The following would not have been suggested, but you did state that Loren> the program doesn't have to play the music... :-) Loren> Well Dave, here is your chance to justify getting AmigaTeX (or the PD Loren> version)... MuTeX is a macro package (with MetaFont fonts) that produces Loren> beautiful pages of music via TeX. I have seen the output, but don't Loren> currently have it on my system due to the fact that music is not Loren> my forte. Tomas Rockiki, author of AmigaTeX, will provide MuTeX Loren> on one of his AmigaTeX PD disks (or I think that it can be downloaded Loren> from BIX) I believe, or it could be ftp'd/email'd from on of the Loren> many archive sites. Loren J. Rittle recommends a package called MuTeX to Dave Haynie. I feel that a few more comments on this matter are in order: I am not familiar with MuTeX. I do know of 2 packages, one called MTeX by its authors (a pair of German MS students who went on to other things before finishing it, but released what they'd done) and MusicTeX by Daniel Taupin. Of the two, MTeX needs LOTS of work before it will be useful. MusicTeX seems to have it's roots in MTeX, and D.T. has done yeoman service in producing it, but it still has problems. Currently, some extreem work is being done on MusicTeX: DT seems to have added the MTeX slur fonts to the latest release, which is dated in March 91. Some of us on bix (I hesitate to mention names) are working on spacing problems and general problems. I will be (someday Real Soon Now) adding some more font characters, for such things as codas, DS al Fine, and some articulations. There is also a package called Smus2TeX, but it suffers a bit: it presumes that you will have a grand staff (piano style) and makes no effort to move notes between staves. Since MusicTeX defines the lowest note that a staff can have to be only about 3 ledger-lines below (although it goes quite high), this means that transposed parts will be miserable. Also, it is quite hard for any semi-intellegent program to make anything out of DMCS, which is currently the best thing for making SMUS scores (sadly enough.) DMCS forces the upper voice to treble clef, the next one down to bass clef, and the subsequent ones to treble. This is disasterous for string quartets, renaissance music (it seems to ignore C clefs altogether, even tho DMCS's internal file format keeps them, and the SMUS definition allows for them!). This wouldn't be so bad if EA weren't responsible for the SMUS format in the first place... Back to MusicTeX: The best documentation for using it is not the notice.tex included with the distribution, but rather the copious examples and source for music.tex. Unfortunately (again) the comments are all in French or German, and most of the macro names are French colloquialisms. Not too much problem for your average European, I'm sure, but my languages are Latin, Forth, C, TeX, and English (in roughly that order!) Finally, the note placement algorithms are not up to the job. There is an excellent article in the latest ACM mag on music-typesetting. Someone on bix is looking into that, and whether it can be applied to MusicTeX. As much as I like (love, sass) AmigaTeX, I wouldn't say that its time for music setting has come. Soon...real soon.... raybro