From: Bob K. <bk...@rk...> - 2010-03-31 14:06:59
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What a pleasant surprise to stumble across Rosegarden while I was evaluating all of the commercial possibilities. If this can do what I need I won't have to switch back to Windows. A couple of tips to make things even better. It appears that the software is doing its XML export by hand instead of using a standard parser/serializer package. I say this because I see malformed XML along the lines of </attribute> (where I assume the empty element <attribute/> was intended). Rolling your own XML serialization is generally a bad idea, leading to mistakes like this. Also, I noticed that the software's sense of what fits in Western keys could use some tweaking. For example, the start of the top line for Contrapunctus I of Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge goes like this (using Lilypond notation): a'2 d'' c'' a' gis' a'4 b' c''2. ... When I pull that line in from my MIDI keyboard, however, Rosegarden spells the G# as an Ab. I realize that this is a domain in which there is a spectrum of difficulty for recognizing what the correct spelling of a note should be, at the far end of which are some very subtle questions to which there may not be any "correct" answers. The example I give, however, is at the easy end of the spectrum. Since I have told Rosegarden that the piece is in D minor, there should be no ambiguity about how to spell a melodic line which touches the dominant of the key, drops to the dominant's leading tone, and then continues back up to the dominant. Thanks for all the hard work that went into this package. I'll do what I can to help with polishing (assuming such help is welcome). -- Bob Kline http://www.rksystems.com mailto:bk...@rk... |
From: Chris C. <ca...@al...> - 2010-04-01 08:39:54
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On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:48 PM, Bob Kline <bk...@rk...> wrote: > A couple of tips to make things even better. It appears that the > software is doing its XML export by hand instead of using a standard > parser/serializer package. I say this because I see malformed XML along > the lines of </attribute> (where I assume the empty element <attribute/> > was intended). It is true that the XML is exported by hand, and you're right that this isn't always wise. However, realistically speaking this is unlikely to change in a hurry as the amount of code involved is fairly substantial, the test burden would be quite heavy, and developer time is always too short! In the mean time, if you can note any particular examples of malformed output, please do, because we should at least fix those. > Also, I noticed that the software's sense of what fits in Western keys > could use some tweaking. For example, the start of the top line for > Contrapunctus I of Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge goes like this (using > Lilypond notation): > > a'2 d'' c'' a' gis' a'4 b' c''2. ... > > When I pull that line in from my MIDI keyboard, however, Rosegarden > spells the G# as an Ab. Others may have more interesting thoughts about this, but I should probably start by saying that RG does not do context-sensitive pitch spelling -- it will always spell a given "MIDI note number" the same way in any given key. That would be a nice thing to improve, though to some extent it's better to be more predictable than more correct (assuming it's not possible to be always correct). At some points in the past RG has been neither, but I think at the moment it should count as fairly predictable at least. Chris |
From: D. M. M. <mic...@ro...> - 2010-04-01 17:21:30
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On Thursday 01 April 2010, Chris Cannam wrote: > However, realistically speaking this is unlikely to change in a hurry Realistically, never. The XML code has been around for 10 years of testing, and it works. We should address any specific examples of malformed output and move right along, in my opinion. > Others may have more interesting thoughts about this, but I should > probably start by saying that RG does not do context-sensitive pitch > spelling -- it will always spell a given "MIDI note number" the same > way in any given key. You are, of course, free to respell things like this after the fact though. It shouldn't be too hard to set up a filter to grab all the G# in one selection so you can mass respell them to Ab. It requires manual effort, but a lot of things in Rosegarden always will. Where we started on this kind of thing, you'd enter B# in the key of C# major and it would draw C#. It's all much better now, but we've reached a point where we're very comfortable with the predictability and stability of this code, and are not much interested in fiddling with it. Drawing G# when you would have preferred Ab is not a bug, it's a nuisance. -- D. Michael McIntyre |