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
98 =item A typesetting engine
100 A system with rules on how to set properties of items to be printed
101 (up/down directions, breaking, dimensions, etc) LilyPond provides one,
102 but it is not (yet) suited to interactive typesetting
104 =item A display engine
106 which can display clear notewriting in (say) an X-window
108 Ideally the system should cooperate with the typesetting engine
110 =item An ASCII language
112 In development, LilyPond has a language. (See over there for goals)
113 Having an ASCII format which enables urtext, and easy sharing (via
114 mail and news forums) encourages cooperation and exchange of music.
116 =item A printing engine
118 Maybe to be merged with the display system.
120 =item An input system
122 The natural way to enter composed music is singing or playing it. The
123 GMP should have module which can take keyboard input or microphone
124 input and convert it to computer data. (microphone input would be
129 (have no clue about this)
131 =item A scanning system
133 Having a system which can produce mudela from printed scores, greatly
134 simplifies creating a collection of music
136 =item A music-understanding system
138 (difficult) A system to generate accompaniments, figured bass,
139 automatic accompaniment, etc.
150 A noninteractive typesetter, suited for batch jobs, and typesetting
151 existing music. This would couple the ASCII language, the printing
152 engine and the typesetting engine
154 LilyPond is currently representing this section.
158 A GUI for composing. This would combine the display engine, the input
159 system and the typesetting engine.
163 Libraries for reading and writing various audio/music/notation
168 =head1 TASKS (SHORT TERM)
174 Think about interfaces for components.
178 Find sponsors. This project will take a long time, and in its infant
179 stages, having a hard and small core which does a lot of work, is more
180 efficient than lots of people doing small subprojects. Finanicial
181 support would be desirable.
190 Please note that this all happened when I wasn't around yet. If you
191 think that I am a biased, unfair, predisposed hypocrite, then don't
192 bother flaming me; I already know that.
194 The GNU Music project is a project which aims to create free software
195 for music printing and composing. It was started in november '92 by a
196 core team of four members (Bryan Ford <baford@cs.utah.edu>, David Linn
197 <drl@vuse.vanderbilt.edu>, Francois Pinard <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca>,
198 Neil Jerram <nj104@cus.cam.ac.uk>) and in January '93 Robert Strandh
199 <Robert.Strandh@labri.u-bordeaux.fr> joined.
201 After serious disputes with Robert Strandh
202 <Robert.Strandh@labri.u-bordeaux.fr> and the FSF staff in '94, the
203 project core team got divided. The development efforts of GMP stopped.
205 Independently, I (HWN) started LilyPond. When I showed it to
206 RMS, he was very enthousiastic about having LilyPond in the GNU
207 project. I subsequently learned about the GNU Music project, and
210 What was left of the GMP (Robert Strandh) and us, LilyPond people,
211 agreed that cooperation would be desirable. Although merging of both
212 efforts was and is technically infeasible, we did decide that LilyPond
213 should also be part of the GNU Music project.
215 Only later did I discover the previous quarrels about the GMP-"take
216 1". To show that I am aware of the history, and to make sure nobody
217 gets me wrong or is angry at me because I stole a project or a
218 project's name, I wrote this note.
220 In summary, LilyPond is now the only substantial embodiment of the GNU Music
221 Project, and it is part of the GNU project.
223 For completeness' sake, I will mention the other efforts here:
227 =item G Sharp, http://dept-info.labri.u-bordeaux.fr/~strandh/Gsharp
229 An alpha version notation editor for X in Scheme. Source available on
234 An alpha version of a music editing system with Musictex
235 output. Pretest versions of GNU Music (v0.3) can still be obtained from
240 This history note is probably biased in some way, because I wrote it.
241 The rest of this document is also entirely mine, and is not meant to
242 reflect anyone else's opinion.