Transforming Music XML

[RickH]

Does anyone have any XSL style sheets or know of a program/editor that
can simply transform standard Music XML files to a printed score?
Note, not a full-fledged notation program just a, XML to print
transformer. Most music notation programs can export to Music XML
these days, but I've had a hard time finding XSL/FO stylesheets or
utilities that can transform it back to engraver quality musical scores
in PDF. Thanks for any help on this, it's my first post here. (Nice
business opportunity here for such a utility, for any enterprising
programmers out there).

The DTD is here at the creators site:

http://www.recordare.com/xml.html

Thanks
Rick

[Joseph Kesselman]

Suggestion: Transform it to ABC notation (another texual description of
music). Tools already exist to render ABC into many other
representations, including both "chicken tracks" and MIDI.

--
Joe Kesselman / Beware the fury of a patient man. -- John Dryden

[Joseph Kesselman]

.... and if you're really looking for "engraver quality", start with a
tool that specializes in this -- Finale or Sibelius -- and see if they
can import MusicML. (If not, they can definitely import MIDI and may be
able to import ABC, but then you'll probably have to recreate some of
the details you expressed in MusicML.)

--
Joe Kesselman / Beware the fury of a patient man. -- John Dryden

[RickH]

Joseph Kesselman wrote:

Suggestion: Transform it to ABC notation (another texual description of
music). Tools already exist to render ABC into many other
representations, including both "chicken tracks" and MIDI.

--
Joe Kesselman / Beware the fury of a patient man. -- John Dryden

I need an easy way to intelligently "batch process" render thousands of
submitted MusicXML text files directly to engraver quality print PDF
files. So it's probably not a simple stylesheet transform solution as
the fonts and graphics for standard music notation are, shall we say,
unique.

I'll look into ABC utilities, but I think my main issues are going to
be with the print quality of a robot doing the rendering, and not
text/xml standards.

Thanks

[RickH]

Joseph Kesselman wrote:

... and if you're really looking for "engraver quality", start with a
tool that specializes in this -- Finale or Sibelius -- and see if they
can import MusicML. (If not, they can definitely import MIDI and may be
able to import ABC, but then you'll probably have to recreate some of
the details you expressed in MusicML.)

--
Joe Kesselman / Beware the fury of a patient man. -- John Dryden

Thanks Joseph

Oh I'm quite familiar with all those editors I use dozens of them every
day, that's why I came here for a programming solution if someone did
one already.

This has to be an automated process that simply takes in MusicXML files
and outputs PDF files with the best print quality possible by a robot.

Finale, etc. all import MusicXML but I would have to find a way to
automate the process (maybe those programs have some command line
interface).

[Joseph Kesselman]

RickH wrote:

Finale, etc. all import MusicXML but I would have to find a way to
automate the process (maybe those programs have some command line
interface).

They might well have one. Ask them?

--
Joe Kesselman / Beware the fury of a patient man. -- John Dryden

[Joseph Kesselman]

RickH wrote:

I'll look into ABC utilities, but I think my main issues are going to
be with the print quality of a robot doing the rendering, and not
text/xml standards.

Probably, but that isn't an XML question.
--
Joe Kesselman / Beware the fury of a patient man. -- John Dryden

[Nikolai Grigoriev]

RickH wrote:

Does anyone have any XSL style sheets or know of a program/editor that
can simply transform standard Music XML files to a printed score?
Note, not a full-fledged notation program just a, XML to print
transformer.

There is a stylesheet to convert from MusicXML to LilyPond:

http://www.nongnu.org/xml2ly/

And LilyPond can produce decently engraved scores in batch mode.
Setting it up may be painful, but once you get past it - the quality is
there.

Regards,
Nikolai

[RickH]

Nikolai Grigoriev wrote:

RickH wrote:

Does anyone have any XSL style sheets or know of a program/editor that
can simply transform standard Music XML files to a printed score?
Note, not a full-fledged notation program just a, XML to print
transformer.

There is a stylesheet to convert from MusicXML to LilyPond:

http://www.nongnu.org/xml2ly/

And LilyPond can produce decently engraved scores in batch mode.
Setting it up may be painful, but once you get past it - the quality is
there.

Regards,
Nikolai

Thanks Nikolai I'll check it out.

[RickH]

Nikolai Grigoriev wrote:

RickH wrote:

Does anyone have any XSL style sheets or know of a program/editor that
can simply transform standard Music XML files to a printed score?
Note, not a full-fledged notation program just a, XML to print
transformer.

There is a stylesheet to convert from MusicXML to LilyPond:

http://www.nongnu.org/xml2ly/

And LilyPond can produce decently engraved scores in batch mode.
Setting it up may be painful, but once you get past it - the quality is
there.

Regards,
Nikolai

Thanks again Nikolai, this is going to work fine. I'm going to write a
little program that writes out a batch file of command line
transactions, then rrun that to convert all the Music XML to PDF in one
run.

[Peter Flynn]

RickH wrote:

Does anyone have any XSL style sheets or know of a program/editor that
can simply transform standard Music XML files to a printed score?
Note, not a full-fledged notation program just a, XML to print
transformer. Most music notation programs can export to Music XML
these days, but I've had a hard time finding XSL/FO stylesheets or
utilities that can transform it back to engraver quality musical scores
in PDF. Thanks for any help on this, it's my first post here. (Nice
business opportunity here for such a utility, for any enterprising
programmers out there).

Have a look at Lilypond. I think the authors were considering an XML
component at some stage.

Otherwise write a transformation to MusixTeX. Complex, but it will
certainly get you engraver-quality.

///Peter

[RickH]

Peter Flynn wrote:

RickH wrote:

Does anyone have any XSL style sheets or know of a program/editor that
can simply transform standard Music XML files to a printed score?
Note, not a full-fledged notation program just a, XML to print
transformer. Most music notation programs can export to Music XML
these days, but I've had a hard time finding XSL/FO stylesheets or
utilities that can transform it back to engraver quality musical scores
in PDF. Thanks for any help on this, it's my first post here. (Nice
business opportunity here for such a utility, for any enterprising
programmers out there).

Have a look at Lilypond. I think the authors were considering an XML
component at some stage.

Otherwise write a transformation to MusixTeX. Complex, but it will
certainly get you engraver-quality.

///Peter

Yes I found a MusicXML to lp converter. So I wrote a program to loop
through all the XML files in a folder and output a BAT command file
that will convert to lp and invoke lily pond for each file. Then I
just run that BAT file that my program created to generate all the
PDF's. It's Windows.