Overview

Overview

After first startup you will get a nearly empty application window divided into three different areas:

• Musical Score View on the left side, containing the Palette when MEI code is rendered. The Palette can be closed and opened separately via the white triangle at the top.
• Outline View in the upper right area.
• Properties View in the lower right area.

There are also the Toolbar in the top area and the Navigator View hidden by the Properties View, giving access to MEI/Project data.

Musical Score View

MEISE's central view is the Musical Score View together with its Palette. As soon as an MEI file is created or opened and edited, musical content will be rendered in this view. MEISE supports viewing multiple opened MEI files. It is possible to arrange different Musical Score Views via tabs or split screens.

Palette

All graphically supported MEI elements are listed in categories and accessible via the Palette. The items within this Palette serve as the main editing facilities as they are dragable to the Outline View. The order of elements within the Palette reflects the hierarchical MEI-structure:

• Select-button: enables the navigation to every position within the Score View.
• Staves category: The creation of staves implies the encoding of logical characteristics for each staff. The definitions contain meta-information such as the clef's pitch, key signature, labels and time signature. The order of the staffGrp elements within the scoreDef and the order of staffDef elements inside the staffGrp determine the score order of the MEI file. The appropriate attributes and values for these containers in MEISE can be added in the Properties View.
• Containers category: The group of elements within this range are such important ones, which act as containers for further events. The section, measure, staff and layer elements could be used for organizing the file, depending on the notation style of the source material and the encoder's needs. The default organization in MEI is the measure-by-measure one, with staff and layer sub-elements. Creating a score with Meise pursues this approach, which is demonstrated in the Outline View.
• Events category: This range represents the basic features of music notation.
• Variants category: The "app" (apparatus) element may be used to accommodate textual variation at nearly any point in a musical text. It is used for differentiation of the musical content of multiple sources, therefore the "rdg" (reading)-child element is required. MEISE is the first music notation tool which provides this important application for musicological use.
• Additions category: These events are normally placed inside the measure after the encoding of staves and notes and represent e.g. slurs, ties and articulation symbols.

Outline View

The Outline View facilitates navigation in MEI documents by providing an overview of the document's tree-structure. All elements are listed in the Outline View and by clicking on an element, the event will be marked in the Editor View in blue color. By right-clicking on an element within the Outline View, a context menu will open with those child-elements which are allowed for insertion at this place, e.g. notes within beams, depending on the position within the MEI tree.

Another way to add events into the score is to right-click on a measure within the Score View and choose an element. The new object's representation will appear in the rendering as well as in the Outline View. Every time an element (Measure, Note, Rest, Beam, Tie, Slur etc.) in the Outline View is selected via left-clicking, the corresponding element in the Score View will be highlighted in blue.

Properties View

The Properties View gives access to the attributes and attribute values of an element highlighted in the Editor View respectively in the Outline View. Clicking on an attribute within the Properties-table allows to change attribute values (depending on MEI standards), either by providing a pop-up list of allowed values, a cell editor to define multiple values or by adding the data manually. The modifications will be displayed immediately in the Editor View. The properties "Id" and "N" are basic information of each event in the score and are generated automatically. They can't be modified within the Properties View.

Toolbar

The Toolbar in the top area of the Editor gives access to the following actions:

• Create a new file or project.
• Print of the musical Score, in case of variant readings, the selected source will be printed.
• Using external tools allows to configure another software for e.g. further tools, where the file could be modified in any way.
• Search enables searching for text in several files, saved in the project-directories, results will be presented beside the Properties View in a Search Result View)
• Last Edit Location
• Last opened file
• Zoom
• Insert measures
• Insert staff definition
• Score Image export makes a screenshot of the current musical score, can be saved as png, jpg or gif.
• MEI prune-Model may be used mainly by software developers, for saving the current file as XML with automatically generated ID's and further attributes. The file must be saved as XML-file.
• Manage sources enables to create and edit sources in the current MEI file.