Thank you very much for the generous offer.
I remember my youth, when I experimented with several music notation
programs, and I believe Finale was one of them. However, when I switched
to a new computer, I could no longer open my compositions. I was so
frustrated that I decided to write music only on paper.
Many years later, that experience was one of the reasons I switched from
paper to LilyPond: the confidence that I will still be able to read my
scores in 30 years, even without relying on a specific computer or
proprietary software.
My reply comes rather late because I was hoping that someone more
experienced than I am would have the time to take on this project.
Some people here know that I am currently working my way into the deeper
internals of LilyPond. My goal is to develop a parser that provides
syntax highlighting and builds a LilyPond AST in C++. I would like that
AST to follow LilyPond's internal structures as closely as possible.
In principle, this could provide a good interface for translating the
Finale DOM into a LilyPond AST and then generating a LilyPond source
file from it.
Finale -> DOM -> AST -> LilyPond
Perhaps the reverse direction could also be possible.
I think there are certainly people here with much greater expertise than
I have. However, if nobody has the time to work on it, I could imagine
taking it on once my parser and AST are finished.
Realistically, though, I do not expect to have time for this before July
2027.
Of course, if someone else has the capacity before then, I would be very
happy for them to tackle it instead.
If my idea makes sense, I suspect that the most challenging part will be
mapping the Finale DOM to the LilyPond AST.
Best regards,
Christian
