3 GNU Music project - manifesto
7 Random ranting about the GNU Music project.
11 Provide musicians with free software for
51 These systems should encourage laymen to take up composing, in the
52 same way that GNU tools have created a whole new generation of
55 The public deserves free tools for composing and printing.
60 Emacs and TeX serve as useful examples of what programs by the GMP
67 (cf TeX), from engraving point of view
71 (cf Emacs) from software point of view: like all GNU software, it
72 should have no limits, be fast, etc.
76 Printed music has a lot of styles, and special symbols. It may be
77 unfeasible to provide and maintain lots of code that is hardwired
78 into the system. The tools should be extensible/programmable like
83 That is, for technical users (that can read a manual). The learning
84 curve should be as flat as possible but not at the expense of comfort
93 =item A set of music fonts
95 Preferably in Metafont, suited to both screen display and use on
96 paper; This is needed because
98 1. the copyright heritage of
99 {Opus,Musix}tex is unclear.
101 2. We don't have any legal papers which make these fonts free (to use
104 =item A typesetting engine
106 A system with rules on how to set properties of items to be printed
107 (up/down directions, breaking, dimensoins, etc) LilyPond provides one,
108 but it is not (yet) suited to interactive typesetting
110 =item A display engine
112 which can display clear notewriting in (say) an X-window
114 Ideally the system should cooperate with the typesetting engine
116 =item An ASCII language
118 In development, LilyPond has a language. (See over there for goals)
119 Having an ASCII format which enables urtext, and easy sharing (via
120 mail and news forums) encourages cooperation and exchange of music.
122 =item A printing engine
124 Maybe to be merged with the display system.
126 =item An input system
128 The natural way to enter composed music is singing or playing it. The
129 GMP should have module which can take keyboard input or microphone
130 input and convert it to computer data. (microphone input would be
135 (have no clue about this)
137 =item A scanning system
139 Having a system which can produce mudela from printed scores, greatly
140 simplifies creating a collection of music
142 =item A music-understanding system
144 (difficult) A system to generate accompaniments, figured bass,
145 automatic accompaniment, etc.
160 A noninteractive typesetter, suited for batch jobs, and typesetting
161 existing music. This would couple the ASCII language, the printing
162 engine and the typesetting engine
164 LilyPond is currently representing this section.
168 A GUI for composing. This would combine the display engine, the input
169 system and the typesetting engine.
173 Libraries for reading and writing various audio/music/notation
178 The typesetting system has a complexity comparable to TeX's, the GUI
179 would be comparable to LyX (?) with additional complexity in
182 =head1 TASKS (SHORT TERM)
188 Gather a moderate number of test users and hackers
200 Think about interfaces for components.
204 Find sponsors. This project will take a long time, and in its infant
205 stages, having a hard and small core which does a lot of work, is more
206 efficient than lots of people doing small subprojects. Finanicial
207 support would be desirable.
216 Please note that this all happened when I wasn't around yet. If you
217 think that I am a biased, unfair, predisposed hypocrite, then don't
218 bother flaming me; I already know that.
220 The GNU Music project is a project which aims to create free software
221 for music printing and composing. It was started in november '92 by a
222 core team of four members (Bryan Ford <baford@cs.utah.edu>, David Linn
223 <drl@vuse.vanderbilt.edu>, Francois Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca>,
224 Neil Jerram <nj104@cus.cam.ac.uk> and in January '93 Robert Strandh
225 <Robert.Strandh@labri.u-bordeaux.fr> joined.
227 After serious disputes with Robert Strandh
228 <Robert.Strandh@labri.u-bordeaux.fr> and the FSF staff in '94, the
229 project core team got divided. The development efforts of GMP stopped.
231 Independently, I (HWN) started LilyPond. When I showed it to
232 RMS, he was very enthousiastic about having LilyPond in the GNU
233 project. I subsequently learned about the GNU Music project, and
236 What was left of the GMP (Robert Strandh) and us, LilyPond people,
237 agreed that cooperation would be desirable. Although merging of both
238 efforts was and is technically infeasible, we did decide that LilyPond
239 should also be part of the GNU Music project.
241 Only later did I discover the previous quarrels about the GMP-"take
242 1". To show that I am aware of the history, and to make sure nobody
243 gets me wrong or is angry at me because I stole a project or a
244 project's name, I wrote this note.
246 In summary, LilyPond is now the only substantial embodiment of the GNU Music
247 Project, and it is part of the GNU project.
249 For completeness' sake, I will mention the other efforts here:
253 =item G Sharp, http://dept-info.labri.u-bordeaux.fr/~strandh/Gsharp
255 An alpha version notation editor for X in Scheme. Source available on
260 An alpha version of a music editing system with Musictex
261 output. Pretest versions of GNU Music (v0.3) can still be obtained from
266 This history note is probably biased in some way, because I wrote it.
267 The rest of this document is also entirely mine, and is not meant to
268 reflect anyone else's opinion.