![]() ![]() ![]() It has already been through three more-or-less-incompatible versions, attempting to fix up the deficiencies in the first release, and a completely "new and improved" next-generation standard is now being developed - though the timescale for actually releasing it isn't yet clear. The documentation of the first versions of MusicXML was pretty vague as well, which has added to the general level of confusion and misinterpretation.īut even "official" standards like MusicXML don't last for ever. For music scores, there has been an attempt at creating a standard format, namely MusicXML, though there are some problems with that, both at the conceptual level of "how the musical content is defined" (the standard tends to focus more on the physical layout of the notation on a page than on its semantic meaning), and at the practical level because many music applications that claim to export MusicXML do a pretty poor job of it. The PDF format for computer documents isn't going to die any time soon, and is much more widely used than a specialist niche like music publishing. If you want to preserve scores "for ever", the best option is to save them in as many different formats as possible. If you subscribe to the developer list, you will see almost continuous activity. Lilypond is certainly being actively developed. On the other hand, Lilypond is open source software, so everything is available at no cost to anyone with the time, patience, and expertise to make use of it. Also, the file formats themselves do not provide a full description of what the score looks like on paper - to do that, you would also need to reproduce all of the logic built into the programs themselves (which is also commercially confidential, of course). These file formats are undocumented and covered by intellectual property agreements. The chance that "someone will write a commercial parser for Sibelius or Finale," if they are abandoned by their current owners is precisely zero. And it is not clear to me that how can Music XML save my tweaking of slurs and other minute details intact. Moreover, my initial impression is that Music XML files are extremely verbose (perhaps for sake of unambiguity?), and one is unlikely to manually edit them. LP producing music XML (see possible output formats in LP manual)-this seems to be impossible. Indeed, there is a library that enables LP to import music XML as LP format (see: importing Music into LilyPond from LP's blog). The possibility is remote that a rare format like LP's will be approved. When people publish, publishers seldom let writers or composers edit source on their own, but call for a format they can handle. If someday I publish my score (though this is absolutely far-fetched as of now), it takes some courage to save one's original work so dear to oneself in a format people seldom use and cannot open, even if LP was (or is) that good. I worry about this very much, because this leads us to another question of whether the LP format is or will be acceptable in the music circle. ![]() So, there are no regular developers, but there are still devoted volunteers to write code? Does this mean LP is still being developed?įurthermore, what if LP becomes abandonware in a few years? I do not worry the same for Sibelius and Finale, since there has been a large user base and even if they really become obsolete one day, someone will certainly write a converting parser for the many legacy works saved in the Sibelius and Finale formats. However, there is a beta version, 2.19.54, released January 2017, so I am confused. And it has been three years since the last stable version, 2.18.2, released in March 2014. The official homepage has a notice that reads "Since no developer currently is listed for commercial development, your best bet is asking on the developer list". ![]()
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