Re: [Denemo-devel] Sibelius 7 to LilyPond Conversion!

[Richard Shann]

On Thu, 2015-10-29 at 16:07 -0300, Thomas Wilmot wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
[...]
> Yes, the big and boring part, all those notes are the most important part
> that I think most would be concerned with.
> I'd have agree that lyrics aren't the highest priority!

Well, if people have spent a lot of time dividing some lyrics into
syllables for some program (like Sibelius) and can't get those divided
syllables out as a pastable bit of text then there would be mileage in
it... in Denemo a verse is just a length of text with bits of LilyPond
syntax for things like verse numbers or bold, italic ...
[...]
> > Did you try the scripts to fix Sibelius's output? Do you need 
> > help running them? Did you try File->Export As->Quick 
> > LilyPond Part to get just the music of the current part into a file?
> 
> Yes the scripts to fix Sibelius's output would likely be useful as I'm
> pretty sure every single error fixed by it is in my score!   I haven't tried
> them as I do need help running them.  I've been using Frescobaldi since last
> month but only installed Denemo yesterday so have no idea about scripting!

Well in brief, you open the window View->Scheme past the script in and
click the Execute button.


> > 
> > Perhaps you are thinking you would like to do this operation 
> > repeatedly
> > - that is, you are thinking of entering the music using 
> > Sibelius and then typesetting it with LilyPond? Denemo is 
> > seriously quicker and more musical for entering music; it is 
> > just that - a music inputting program, with everything 
> > tailored to getting music into the computer in the most 
> > convenient and least tedious way possible.
> 
> I need to do this operation repeatedly because I have multiple parts in my
> score (I thought it would be best to do each part seperately, then
> re-assemble the entire project using Frescobaldi's Wizard for score
> structure.)

Well that is not what I would call repeatedly, since when you are done
with this you won't be creating yet more Sibelius files to be
transferred. And certainly, if you are going to end up with it all in
Frescobaldi you can wait till then and transform it all to \relative
with a single mouse-click.


> I have been using LilyPond since about 2011 and I absolutely love it!  The
> only reason I am using Sibelius is because I have to transfer a friend's
> Sibelius score into LilyPond and re-engrave it for a project.
> 
> I really like Frescobaldi though I just kind of discovered it,

yes, it is a really good program, and very nice to look at too.

>  but I might
> look into Denemo more seriously later on.
> I just say it's bizzare because it's a very unusual way of inputting music

this would be the most interesting contribution you may have for Denemo
- describing other ways of entering music which might be good. Denemo is
highly configurable so if there is a way of entering music that people
would immediately feel comfortable with and is not hopelessly
inefficient it would be a good idea to make it available in Denemo.

> (though I suppose many people would say that about LilyPond too) and because
> the interface is kind of rough hewn (it doesn't even have its own
> application icon),
that's just a Windows installation bug, the icon is there but in the
wrong place ... part of that rough hewn look :)

>  and completely non-native to Windows which makes the text
> render kind of blurry since it doesn't seem to use system fonts
it comes with its own font so as to be able to write note glyphs in
sentences and have them be easily read - you can change the font via the
preferences but you may find it difficult to read the difference between
𝅗𝅥 and 𝅘𝅥 for example.
>  or respect
> settings like disabling font smoothing, as well as being generally slow.
> Maybe it's because it uses GTK instead of Qt. Also I didn't like how the
> installer installs its own special version of LilyPond (which seems to be
> the development 2.19 or some reason) even when the latest stable version
> LilyPond is already installed instead of asking the user.

this is a misunderstanding on your part, Denemo does not install
LilyPond but rather has a version built-in. Your own installed version
is untouched and you can tell Denemo to use it via the preferences.
Having a built-in version has obvious benefits for the naive user and it
means there will definitely be a compatible version of LilyPond
available. (Don't try to use a ten-year-old version of LilyPond, the
syntax has changed too much!)
> 
> I hate to sound so negative

not at all, it is nice to have feedback...

>  and I don't have time to test the upcoming
> version 2 at the moment but those things just really turn me off of using
> programs. </unnecessary_rant>
yes - I think you are by no means alone, commercial programs concentrate
on appearance because that is what gets people to use them.

> On the positive side, the toolbar icons are actually nicer than
> Frescobaldi's 

Hmm, "toolbar icons" are those the ones like New, Open, Save ...? I'm
not sure what set you get on windows, but that is one of the first
toolbars that I get rid of as it wastes space and you can use the
keyboard for the tasks more quickly :)

> and it is nice how it just uses LilyPond to compile in the
> background when you're not paying attention!  :)

Once you are using Denemo for seriously entering music you will turn it
off as you can enter music so fast that it causes hiccups. I turn it on
when doing tweaks such as re-shaping slurs or dragging rehearsal marks
(yes, LilyPond does *sometimes* misplace things), and even in that case
if the score is a large one I reduce the re-drawing just to the cursor
context so that it is done quickly enough.

Thank you for the feedback.

Richard