Hi all,
I read about the 2022 thread "Blind and visually impaired users learning
LilyPond," and the earlier 2011/2013 discussions on bringing braille
music support to LilyPond, and wanted to share a project that speaks
directly to that history: DottedNotes (www.dottednotes.net), a free,
open-source tool for converting between braille music, MusicXML, and
LilyPond.
Those earlier threads debated an architectural question that's still
relevant: should braille conversion go through MusicXML as an
intermediate, or map LilyPond's elements to braille more directly?
DottedNotes takes a third approach — it parses braille, MusicXML, or
LilyPond input into a shared internal representation (Score, Note, and
other musical objects, in Python), then renders that representation out
to whichever format you need. So braille→LilyPond doesn't route through
MusicXML's limitations, and any of the three formats can convert to any
other, including round-tripping.
Since DottedNotes bundles LilyPond itself, it can also compile straight
to PDF and MIDI from any input format — so a blind composer can write a
score in braille and get a fully engraved, publication-quality score and
audio playback out the other end, without leaving the tool.
I built this because I don't think composing music should cost blind
musicians more time or money than it costs sighted composers — braille
transcription is typically $4-12/page and covers only a fraction of
what's on a printed page, and the leading dedicated braille music
software runs into the hundreds of dollars. DottedNotes is free, and
will stay that way.
It's still actively developing, and I'm one person building it, so bug
reports and feedback are genuinely valuable. The code is on GitHub at:
https://github.com/judithhinlung/DottedNotes
if anyone wants to look at the internals or contribute — I'd be glad to
talk through the architecture in more depth here if there's interest,
given how much prior thought this list has put into the problem.
You can try it at www.dottednotes.net.
Judith
Judith
