[Denemo-devel] Sibelius 7 to LilyPond Conversion!

[Thomas Wilmot]

Hello,

I have a multi-part band score in Sibelius 7 that I have been trying to
convert to LilyPond format. (No, not the original Sibelius 7 for RISC OS,
but rather the newer Sibelius 7.1.3.77 for Microsoft Windows.)  I have
exported it into the MusicXML exchange format and attempted to use the
MusicXML2LY program supplied with LilyPond with no luck. It will read the
XML file but then spit out a bunch of complaints, but no LilyPond file is
produced! I tried splitting a single instrument's part from the main
Sibelius file, then exporting just that and running MusicXML2LY but that
didn't even get rid of any of the errors, never mind produce a file!

I read elsewhere someone having this same problem recently with the same
versions of Sibelius and LilyPond I am using (7.1.3.77 and 2.18.2,
respectively),and they were suggested to try Denemo, which apparently uses
its own methods for conversion and its own of LilyPond.  I'd never used it
before, but I gave it a shot, and the interface is really bizzarre on
Windows, but I figured it out and was able to actually produce a file!  It
does the conversion its own way adding a lot of strange wrappers, which can
be easily removed, however my biggest problem is that everything is
converted in absolute mode.
If I were using the regular LilyPond MusicXML2LY program, I would simply run
it with the -r option, but I don't see how this can be done in Denemo. It
also adds staccato and other markings with "-\staccato" or "-\markup" - I
don't know the purpose of the hyphen, but it makes the file fail if your
remove Denemo's weird wrappers and other commands.  This should be
changeable with Find & Replace, but still my point is that it'd be nice if
LilyPond 2.18.2's MusicXML2LY just worked! :P
  Of course I could manually remove all the octave markings but there are
about seventeen pages of music I'm working with so I'd love to hear of an
easier way! (Edit: I heard this can be done in Frescobaldi but I'm hoping it
can all be done with the Denomo conversion tool.  Also I'm curious as to why
Denemo's works!  Is the MusicXML2ly tool completely separate and
independently developed from LilyPond's?

This message is reposted from the LilyPond forum because I thought you
Denemonians might know some way to make change the output to relative mode
as was suggested by someone there.

Thanks,
   Thomas