Re: Keyboard use (was Re: A few questions about using Denemo on Windows)

[Richard Shann]

On Mon, 2020-08-10 at 12:06 +0200, Petr Pařízek wrote:
> Richard wrote:
> 
>  > If you make progress please report back as others will want to
> know.
> 
> I would love to. But in order I could do that, there would have to be
> at 
> least a brief set of introductory instructions on how a specific 
> procedure (like writing a simple melody) can be done entirely via
> the 
> keyboard and what things Denemo will be playing then via MIDI.

What I was thinking about was that if those instructions about setting
the GTK_MODULES environment variable were to work for Windows users
then presumably some new behavior of the program would become evident
on trying to use it with some accessibility tools. At least, that is
what I understood the reference you gave to be saying. But even that
might require a sighted person to test.

A brief set of instructions to write a simple melody would be

Press Ctrl-W (to close any open score)
press c d e f g a b (to append the notes c d e f g a b)

and you have a score comprising a c-major scale in quarter-notes on a
single staff with treble clef. The pitches would sound as you appended
each note. (However if you wanted different rhythms no audible feedback
is given when you change the duration of the current note).

However, you would then face the problem that to save the score or to
print it there is no obvious text-based method. (There *is* a text-
based method but it would involve opening up the Scheme window and
typing in things like
(d-Save "myscore.denemo")
and
(d-ExportPDF "myscore.pdf")
but the "opening up the Scheme window" is a graphical operation...)

I think the bottom line is that while Denemo is a program that could be
easily adapted to inputting music and outputting typeset scores
entirely by PC keyboard giving audible feedback at each step and
providing audible context description, it would take a close co-
operation between a developer and a user to achieve that. And, as such
a program would not have lots of users it still would not be possible
to share scores between users of other programs.

A more promising approach would be to try to encourage development of 
Frescobaldi to include playing the note pitches as entered, playing the
current measure/bar etc. You would still only be able to exchange
scores with other LilyPond users, as LilyPond doesn't have anything
practicable to enable it to export to graphical score writers.

HTH

Richard