"Mogens Lemvig Hansen" wrote
>Prompted by my question about conditional double posting of irregular
>meters, Werner expressed his bewilderment as why I do not use PMX, so
>I thought about it, and here is what I came up with:
>
>PMX is yet another piece of software to get, make work, and learn how
>to use.
>
>I am (in priciple) weary about software piles: TeX, LaTeX, MusiXTeX,
>PMX, (M-Tx) seems high; one broken piece and the tower tumbles.
Mogens is certainly entitled to his opinion. But the sad thing about
this posting is that it could discourage others from trying PMX and
forming their own opinions.
Compared to installing TeX, PMX is a piece of cake.
Compared to the syntatictal labyrinth of TeX, the PMX language is a
short straight path.
When you install and use any piece of software, you implicitly decide
whether the hassle is worth the gain. If it isn't, no one would use
the software. Mr. Mogens argument could apply as well to any word
processor. Why not just keep on using a typewriter?
>I already have 321 hymn tunes in MusiXTeX
>(http://users.uniserve.com/~mlhansen/hymnal.html); I suppose I could
>write a Perl script translating the MusiXTeX to PMX and then have PMX
>translate it back again...
If you enjoy programming so much that you would consider writing
obviously useless software, then maybe you'd like to join the PMX
programming team (currently one member) and do something that at least
some people consider useful.
>When people discuss PMX (or M-Tx) on this mailing list, the trouble
>is usually how to overcome some limitation of PMX (/M-Tx) by using
>in-line MusiXTeX code or post-editing the MusiXTeX file made by PMX.
>I prefer to know MusiXTeX (and LaTeX and plain old TeX) well enough
>to just stay there.
People generally are far more likely to post their problems and
questions than to go out of the way to praise something. It's a
little like the evening news.
>So far I have only come across one feature, conditional double
>posting of irregular meters, which PMX can do (easily) while it seems
>impossible in "beautiful" MusiXTeX code...
Then I guess you've never made parts from a score.
But even if not for that capability or the flexibility in page width
while maintaining end-of-line features, PMX will always save at least
60% of the number of keystrokes required by MusiXTeX and will check
that there are the correct number of beats in every measure and if
not, tell you exactly where the mistake is. It will also do countless
other things that yes, you can do in TeX, but no thank you, I'd rather
not bother, such as (for example) inserting extra space for
accidentals, dots, and flags if needed to avoid crashes, and parse the
input from a sensible, linear stream into the rugged jumble required
by MusiXTeX.
"You pays your money ($0.00) and you makes your choice."
--Don Simons
