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 0.50 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 0.52 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 README.052 and mtx052.zip,
and depending on your printer either mtx052.lj or mtx052.ps.
The latter two are optional, since mtxdoc.dvi is in mtx052.zip (but it
does use MusiXTeX fonts).
To run M-Tx, you need MusiXTeX 0.80 or later, PMX 1.43 (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 mtx052.zip. These materials
are all available from the above-mentioned archive.
What's new?
1. Dot and accidental adjustments available in PMX 1.43 no longer
confuse M-Tx.
2. c..d shortcut for double-dotted notes.
3. )t(t for continuation ties.
4. Relies on PMX 1.43 for certain features previously in M-Tx but
not in PMX 1.38 (e.g. more than one whole-bar rest on a stave)
5. More than one preamble paragraph allowed to overcome 24-line
restriction.
Bug fixes (too many to mention)
As you have no doubt noticed, this is not a major release. The main
purpose was to make M-Tx more compliant with the recent major release
of PMX. It is likely to be the last release of M-Tx with source code
that does not require a C++ compiler.
Happy music typesetting!
Dirk Laurie
