I've just uploaded mtx050.zip to ftp.gmd.de. If you can't find
it yet, be patient. -- Dirk Laurie
M-Tx is a music-from-text language designed to look as much as possible
like printed music. To give you an idea of what that means, here is some
typical input code (users of M-Tx 0.40 may skip to "What's New?"):
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Net soos ek is
Composer: Charlotte Elliott
Style: SATB
Sharps: 2
Meter: 3/4
Space: 9
%% w190m
@+5 b4 b b | b2d | a4 a a | a2d | d4 e- f | g2 e4 | d2d of |]
L: Net soos ek is, net soos ek is, O Lam van God, ek kom.
d4s g f | e2d | e4 f e | d2d | d4 dr d | d2 c4 | d2d |]
@^+5 rp | b4 e d | c2d | a4 d c | ( b2d | b2 ) g4 | f2d |]
LT: Net soos ek is, O Lam van God, ek kom.
a4 a a | g2d | g4 g g | f2d | b4- g+ f | e2 a4- | d2d ofd |]
L: Net soos ek is, net soos ek is, O Lam van God, ek kom.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
1. Lines describing title, composer, sharps and meter are
self-explanatory, I hope.
2. "Style: SATB" means "four-voice choral music on two staves."
3. "%% w190m" means "Issue PMX command 'w190m' here" (which means
"Set the piece to a width of 190mm.")
4. "Space: 9" means "Use 9 interlines of extra space between the staves."
5. Line boundaries are meaningful. You can see the lines for soprano,
alto, tenor and bass from top to bottom, interspersed by lyrics
associated with the alto, tenor and bass voice lines.
6. Notes and ornaments are written in the PMX language developed by
Don Simons.
7. ( ... ) are notes under a slur.
8. In general each syllable of lyrics is aligned with a note from its
associated voice. A group of notes that are slurred together only
uses one syllable of lyrics.
9. "@^+5" means "set this line of lyrics above the stave and 5 internotes
higher than usual."
10. This piece has been typed neatly, with notes aligned and bar lines
put in, to look like real music, but you need not actually be so
painstaking.
If you would like to see how this looks, you can download M-Tx 0.50 from
http://www.gmd.de/Misc/Music/musixtex/software/mtx
(or if you prefer FTP)
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/music/musixtex/software/mtx
To make your own scores, you will need to unzip mtx050.zip, using an
unzipper with a text file conversion option (e.g. 'unzip -a mtx050'
for GNU unzip). You should first read the README file and then view
the file doc/mtx050.dvi (for that you need the MusiXTeX fonts).
To run M-Tx, you need MusiXTeX 0.80 or later, PMX 1.3.8 (the current
version) and musixlyr 1.1 (the current version). By kind permission of
Rainer Dunker the file musixlyr.tex (but not the documentation, which
is strongly recommended) is included in mtx050.zip. These materials
are all available from the above-mentioned archive.
What's new?
1. Broken (dotted) slurs.
2. Blind slurs, i.e. user-defined melismas.
3. rp (pause) always printed, even with a two-voiced stave,
rpb and vertically adjusted pauses (e.g. rp+2)
4. 'Part' and 'Poet' in the heading
5. Flexible support for multiple versions of a score: whole
paragraphs or certain lines of a paragraph may be skipped
depending on a run-time option.
6. Preamble may run over several paragraphs, some of which
are optionally skipped
7. 'Start' preamble commmand to specify bits prepended to first
paragraph - mainly useful in optional paragraphs
8. 'G8' clef for tenor voice: standard in SATB style
9. Support for left-aligned verse numbers and a short explanation
of some musixlyr commands.
10. Crescendo and decrescendo
11. Multi-bar rests
12. SUSPEND and RESUME to cut out parts of a score during debugging
13. An annotated example on how to add TeX text to a score (contributed
by Christian Mondrup)
Bug fixes (too many to mention)
Happy music typesetting!
Dirk Laurie
