On Sat, 7 Apr 2007 16:40:01 -0400 "Jason Merrill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So far, the best option was suggested by Tom: a tool called PDFtoMusic > Pro that converts PDF scores into MusicXML. The pros are that it is > available right now, and that it presumably works. Downsides are that > it is proprietary and not free, and takes what seems to me a rather > indirect route towards solving my particular problem. > > Any other suggestions? Any comments on the likelihood of being able > to compile lilypond into a music interchange format at some point in > the future? One possibiltiy that has not been mentioned yet is to use lilypond's SVG output instead of PDF. SVG is an open standard developed at the w3c: http://www.w3c.org/Grapics/SVG/ The pros: since SVG is an open standard and not reliant on one company to support it, it is, in a sense, more future-proof than PDF. SVG is an xml dialect and therefore it will be possible to use XSLT to transform the SVG files into future file formats (although I accept that this could be time-consuming). The cons: SVG is not music-aware - it is merely a graphics file. The files can be edited in a graphics program such as Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org) but this is only in a moving-blobs-and-lines-around-a-screen sense not in a notation editor. It would be possible to make lilypond's SVG output more music-aware (and this is an area that I am interested in) but, as far as I know, there is no svg-based music-aware file format that you could use. You would therefore still have to archive the .ly files or their MusicXML equivalents. SVG are supported in Firefox and Konqueror (in GNU/Linux) but I understand that support in IE is is poor. In conclusion: SVG provide an alternative to PDF which may be more future-proof provided that you are prepared for patchy support in current browsers. Stuart _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user