The draft of the new version of the MusiXTeX manual is available at http://icking-music-archive.org/software/mxdoc109d.pdf .
On p.iii (Preface to Version T.113) it says "This documentation is rather technical and is probably not the best way to begin typesetting music. If you are a beginner, you should visit the software section of the Werner Icking Music Archive. In particular, we recommend Cornelius Noacks tutorial. It contains helpful information for getting started with MusiXTEX, as well as a tutorial for PMX, a preprocessor for MusiXTEX with a much simpler input language, and a brief introduction to M-Tx, a preprocessor for PMX which eases the inclusion of lyrics." On p.iv (Preface to Version T.113) it says "It remains true that this is the definitive reference to all features of MusiXTEX, but also that it is not the best place for a novice user to start. The Werner Icking Music Archive contains excellent and detailed instructions for installing MusiXTEX and the strongly recommended preprocessors PMX (for instrumental music) and M-Tx (for vocal) under Linux/unix or Windows 2000. Once the software is installed, most common music typesetting tasks can be accomplished entirely by using one of these preprocessors to generate the MusiXTEX input file, relieving the user of learning any of the commands or syntax of MusiXTEX itself. It is only for out-of-the-ordinary constructions that one must learn these details, so he may insert the necessary MusiXTEX commands into the preprocessors input file as so called inline TEX. Cornelius Noacks tutorial is an important resource which, in addition to gently introducing the novice to PMX and M-Tx, gives further details on installing Postscript slur facilities." On p.1 it says "... However most users will find it far less taxing to let such decisions be made largely by the preprocessor PMX, which in addition uses a much simpler input language than MusiXTEX." I think 3 mentions in the first three pages of text is adequate promotion for PMX. (That's three more than Daniel ever gave it.) I agree that disk space is no longer an issue, and that the tone of the Kuyken remark is too negative, but my main problems with the quote are that it comes *before* any mention of PMX and doesn't provide any way out. I certainly don't disagree with the part about setting up TeX and MusiXTeX; witness for example Christian's recent tangle with Type 1 fonts for pdfTeX in Fedora Core 4. Bottom line, though, is that in view of the prevailing sentiment so far, I'm leaning toward removing the quote. --Don Simons > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Bernhard > Lang > Sent: Monday, July 10, 2006 5:57 AM > To: Typesetting music with TeX > Subject: Re: [TeX-music] Kuykens's warning, history of MusiXTeX > > > > When a person familiar with Word, Powerpoint, or Finale, or other > > WYSIthingy stuff sees me making corrections in a MusiXTeX file after > > he pointed out errors in my score, his face becomes green :-) > > > > Has anybody a similar experience? I doubt things would be different > > with PMX. > > The point should be encouraging for PMX/MTX in favor of musixtex, not > discouraging from musixtex and friends in general (someone who has > decided to give musixtex a try would not get a green face, I'm quite > sure, because he most probably already uses tex and knows how to handle > these kind of files with their syntax). Quite often we have beginner's > questions about musixtex on the list and the standard advice is "did > you consider using...?" Pointing that out at a prominent position in > the musixtex manual would help. > > bernhard > > _______________________________________________ > TeX-music mailing list > [email protected] > http://icking-music-archive.org/mailman/listinfo/tex-music > _______________________________________________ TeX-music mailing list [email protected] http://icking-music-archive.org/mailman/listinfo/tex-music
