On Thu, 17 Aug 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I have an idea to try a cottage industry publishing music, i.e.
> offering a music typesetting service to local composers etc.
>
> I am very impressed with Musixtex especially as it runs on
> Linux and this would appear to be a suitable tool for typesetting
> musically on a professional basis. However I don't know any of
> the other tools - I've heard of Sibelius and a quick look on the
> web for people offering a music typesetting service revealed that
> they seemed to use Fidelio 2000. I guess both of these are MS
> windows based (a big down side from my point of view) and both
> WYSIWIG (I'm happier working in TeX). My main questions are:
>
> i) How does Musixtex compare with the likes of Fidelio when it
> ii) Once I am familiar with Musixtex and can code reasonably quickly
> - will this be quick enough for a professional service, i.e. cost
> will be based on the time it takes to typeset a manuscript? >
It is difficult to find somebody who can compare all the
typesetting programs. Some cheaper commercial ones I tried
are no comparison to Musixtex, but I cannot tell about the
professional typesetting ones. These will be very expensive.
Regarding speed: if you use a preprocessor like PMX and
a pre-preprocessor like M-Tx, then typesetting Musixtex is
very fast. The preprocessors do not cover the full
repertoire of Musixtex; however, inline Musixtex commands are
permitted. Preprocessors as well as Musixtex run in Windows
and in Linux; I have both but prefer Linux because you can
write nice Scripts.
>
> iii) Can Musixtex be used with midi files, i.e. producing music
> automatically?
There are programs that can import midi, but I have no experience
and they seem in an early development stage. Exporting midi for
checking is possible with the PMX preprocessor. Again the full
repertoire is not covered.
>
> I am a capable C/C++ programmer so, time permitting, perhaps
> I could contribute to the project, e.g. see my previous e-mail
> regarding bar lines? I would need some guidance on where to start etc.
What do you want to program with C? A postprocessor? The bar line
problem has to be solved with TeX macros and you could make an add-on
solving that.
Happy musixtexing,
Christof
