14 Dec
2011
14 Dec
'11
8:16 p.m.
On 12/8/2011 2:24 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 8 Dec 2011 at 11:50, Fred Cisin wrote:
I guess we're straying pretty far OT here, but I just couldn't resist
responding since music is one of the other loves of my life. Though I
read music rather slowly and poorly, I was able to detect the monotonic
spacing in the first examples before I scrolled down and read the rest.
I have a rather old copy of MusicTime I still use occasionally, and
IIRC I can go back and adjust the horizontal note spacing as I please.
I usually do that - for one thing to make the notes fit the words
better, as most things I use it for have words. I'm less sure about bar
location and bar tilt - which I find very attractive in expressing the
flow of the piece.
Mandatory computer related content: Software appearance matters - a lot!!!
(BTW, I agree that WordStar is still very useful at times. I think mine
is 4.0 and I use it under DOS or in a sorta-DOS window.)
--
Later,
Charlie C.
In God We Trust!!!
Freedom is in dire danger any time the US congress is in session...
Want to fix the post office? How about a "do not mail" list!
WYSIWYG and YAFIYGI both have their uses and
benefits.
Nothing beats WYSIWYG for an amateur playing with fonts;
V "I KNOW what they look like. I can get more DONE, putting in the
codes while working in text mode."
There's still much to be said for handling things with WordStar. My
editor-of-choice on Linux is Joe. The other day, I was given a mass
of text that included tables that needed to be edited, replacing
columns and duplicating others. WordStar column mode to the rescue.
WordStar was WYSIWYG until prop fonts came along. I still have an
add-on kit for WS 3.3 (CP/M) that allows for prop spaced fonts, even
if they don't show on the screen.
There were several early text-processing packages whose formatted
output was very different from what was being displayed on the
screen. Troff wasn't even remotely the first.
I find that music notation is very similar to text layout. Actually,
it compares more accurately to calligraphy.
It wasn't all that long ago that most music scores were produced by
copper plate engraving by hand. And the result was some truly
artistic work. Even today, the troff-type Lilypond still struggles
to match the quality of the old hand-engraved scores. By the same
token, I can identify a computer-produced score from the likes of
Sibelius and Finale in a heartbeat. There's no "flow" or "style"
to
the output.
To see what I mean, take a look at the Lilypond essay:
http://lilypond.org/web/about/automated-engraving/introduction
That being said, setting a full orchestra score by text input into
Lilypond is unbelievably onerous. Most of the WYSIWYG "front end"
packages to Lilypond have been abandonded or are buggy or awkward.
--Chuck