Takt Files

Takt: Text-based Music Programming Tools

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SOFTWARE
=================================

Takt is a text-based music programming language designed by the author.
It has the following features:

  - It allows a concise description of note and chord sequences 
    like `c d [e g]'.
  - Expressive information such as dynamics or tempo rubato can be
    added to such note/chord sequences.
  - It provides rich programming features including object-oriented
    support with C-like syntax. Such features enable seamless
    fusion of note-by-note description and algorithmic composition.
  - Music transformation (such as transposition) can be applied to
    musical phrases described with the above means.  Many predefined
    transformation modules are available; in addition; users can
    develop their own transformation modules with the language.
    Transformations can also be applied to standard MIDI files or
    events from a MIDI input device in a reactive way.

This package contains an interpreter for Takt, a MIDI-file-to-Takt
translator, and Emacs interfacing programs.  The Takt interpreter, the
main part of this package, reads Takt program code from a console or a
source file.  Based on the code, the interpreter generates MIDI
events, which are transmitted to MIDI output devices in real time or
stored to a MIDI file.  The MIDI-file-to-Takt translator enables users
to view a MIDI file in the form of the language, which can be edited
and converted to another MIDI file.  The language-specific mode for
Emacs enables note entry from a MIDI keyboard as well as playing a
described score with a score-following cursor.

Supposed users of this software include but not limited to:

  - Music composers, students and educators who are interested in
    generated music
  - Researchers on music information science
  - Developers of MIDI-related software
  - Computer music hobbyists 


PACKAGE CONTENTS
================
This package contains the followings:
 
 o  A REPL interpreter for Takt (written in C++)
 o  A MIDI-file-to-Takt translator (written in C++ and Takt)
 o  Takt libraries (written in Takt) 
 o  Emacs interface (written in Emacs-Lisp and Takt)
 o  Documents (Takt language reference manual and Man pages)


LICENSE
=======
The Takt interpreter, the MIDI-file-to-Takt translator, and the Emacs
interfacing programs are released under the GNU General Public License
(version 2 or later, see COPYING).  The Takt libraries are released
under the GNU Lesser General Public License (version 2.1 or later, see
COPYING.LGPL).  See the copyright notice in each source file for more
details.

The documents are distributed under the Creative Commons 
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).


PORTABILITY
===========
For Windows (XP or later), Mac OS X, and Linux (w/ALSA) platforms,
this software should work with full features.

For other platforms, direct MIDI input/output by the interpreter is
not available at this point; however, the interpreter should still be
usable as a file conversion tool by specifying a MIDI file for its
output.

So far, it has been tested on the following environments:
  - Windows Vista and 7 (32-bit MINGW gcc/g++)
  - Windows Vista and 7 (32-bit Cygwin gcc/g++)
  - Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.9
  - Linux: Ubuntsu 12.04 LTS


NOTES ON THE BINARY PACKAGE FOR WINDOWS
=======================================
The binary distribution for Windows contains DLL files of the following
libraries used by the interpreter and translator.

readline5.dll: GNU Readline Library, version 5.0
  Copyright (C) 1987-2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 
  License: GPL v2+  (See COPYING for details)
  Source URL: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/readline.htm
  A patch in the mingw directory of this package is applied.
libgnurx-0.dll: Regular expression library (part of the GNU C Library)
  Copyright (C) 2002,2003,2004,2005,2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  License: LGPL v2.1+  (See COPYING.LGPL for details)
  Source URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/Other/UserContributed/regex/mingw-regex-2.5.1/


NOTES ON THE BINARY PACKAGE FOR MAC OS X
========================================
The interpreter contained in the binary distribution for Mac OS X is 
statically linked with the following library.

GNU Readline Library, version 6.3
  Copyright (C) 1987-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 
  License: GPL v2+  (See COPYING for details)
  Source URL: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/readline/


CAVEAT
======
Describing copyrighted music with a language and distributing it
without permissions of the copyright holder of the music may infringe
on the rights of the copyright holder.


BUG REPORTS, SUGGESTIONS, COMMENTS
==================================
Use the Ticket system at http://sourceforge.net/p/takt or e-mail me.


AUTHOR
======
Satoshi Nishimura    University of Aizu, Japan
Email: See the README file in each downloaded package