You can get started with a reasonable MusicXML import project for as little as a US $10 investment in Finale NotePad. For a MusicXML export project, just download a free Finale demo. Recordare does not make any money from either the sales or downloads of MakeMusic products.
The Finale products offer the closest thing that MusicXML has to a reference implementation. They may not be free or open source, but since you do not need the full versions of the software, it is far from a major investment. If the open source community wants a free and open source reference implementation, the MuseScore, Zong, and LilyPond projects would be natural candidates for this work. Checking the musical results of a MusicXML exporter is neither difficult nor costly. For best results it would be good to check with a free download of the Sibelius demo as well as the Finale demo. However, if you try to export LilyPond's formatting, checking the results does become more complicated. It is only a select few programs like the Legato Sheet Music Viewer (fka musicRAIN) that interpret and display full MusicXML formatting, including note spacing. Those applications are indeed expensive. But perhaps Legato would be interested in cooperating in this effort, especially given the interest expressed in the issue tracker from one of their potential customers. Reinhold, if you feel an explanation on the MusicXML list is missing a crucial element, please feel free to follow up! In some cases, I fear that what you want to see from the format is at odds with MusicXML's use of selective encoding. Selective encoding allows applications and scores to skip the export of information that is not applicable to their needs. This design helps with adoption of MusicXML export, but does place additional burdens on MusicXML import. Interchange format design is full of tradeoffs like this. We may not have made the optimal tradeoff in every case. Given MusicXML's success, we seem to have done well more often than not. For those who are interested in more MusicXML discussions, feel free to join the MusicXML mailing list. Signup is at: http://www.recordare.com/lists#MusicXML Reinhold has made excellent contributions to the MusicXML community with his participation on the MusicXML list and with his test suite. We welcome more contributions from the LilyPond community. But we would prefer it if you refrain from calling our company "sleazy" and "bad". Best regards, Michael Good Recordare LLC _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
