> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Sawer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
(snip)
> I realise that typesetting can be copyright - this is the reason I
> can't buy a book of Bach's Urtexts (for example), photocopy
> parts of it
> and give them away.
>
> However, mudela code (by its very name - MUsic DEscription LAnguage)
> just describes the music, in a similar way to which ASCII describes
> plain text. I don't see how we can copyleft public domain /mudela/. We
If mudela did nothing more than describe the music, I would agree. But,
despite its name, mudela contains lots of information about how to typeset
the music. That's why turning a midi file into a usable mudela file is so
much work. The midi file `describes' the music, but mudela contains much
more.
> could copyleft the dots and lines that make up music, but not
> the music
> itself, eg. the fact that Beethoven's "Fur Elise" starts "e
> dis e dis b
> d c a". This is what Beethoven wrote, and all we have done is type it
> in. It is Lilypond that is creating the dots and lines from
> this mudela
> description.
But the mudela file also contains information about where to put beams, how
to represent rests, where and in what type style to put editorial marks,
whether to draw stems up or down, whether to put different parts on separate
staves or on a common staff, what line width to use, how far to separate
staves, what font size to print in, etc, etc, etc.
> If, for example, some out-of-copyright music from Mutopia appears in a
> book which people then charge for, and stop people copying, what is to
> prevent them saying when challenged that they simply entered the music
> into Lilypond themselves?
a. That would be dishonest.
b. The liklihood of two independently entered mudela files appearing
identical in every respect when printed is small.
Glen Prideaux
