Re: Proposal: Make Sibelius Dolet MusicXML plugin open source

Speaking as a member -- not as co-chair -- I agree that the Dolet plugin is
an essential tool for anyone working with MusicXML and Sibelius today.
Analogous plugins are already useful for MEI, and will be useful in the
future for MNX. It's also true that Dolet embodies various decisions about
how to turn Sibelius into MusicXML that (inevitably) are sometimes helpful,
sometimes not. So having it be open to community improvement would be
great. Open sourcing it (or an equivalent to it, which is quite a lot of
work) would probably help with adoption and interoperability.

But even if Dolet were open source, I would stop short of calling a
Sibelius plugin a "reference implementation" for anything (since we can't
see inside Sibelius). Discussing its development here seems perfectly
appropriate. But I hesitate to say that a plugin specific to some vendor's
proprietary product is part of the CG's scope of work. It just seems like a
good thing that hopefully the community can facilitate.

As MakeMusic's representative, Michael's clearly the best person to respond
further here, since MakeMusic owns the IP.

Best,

.            .       .    .  . ...Joe

Joe Berkovitz
Founder
Noteflight LLC

49R Day Street
Somerville MA 02144
USA

"Bring music to life"
www.noteflight.com

On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 11:38 AM, Andrew Hankinson <
andrew.hankinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> The language is 'baked in' to Sibelius, but it is possible to make open
> source projects in that language. It's not directly portable (you can't run
> the same code as JavaScript, for example) but it is defined enough that you
> can use it as an actual programming language. I've ported a Java XML input
> library into ManuScript, that creates Manuscript data structures from XML:
>
> https://github.com/music-encoding/sibmei/blob/master/lib/libmei.plg#L1664
>
> (from the aforementioned Sibelius to MEI exporter). This has been stable
> through the last few Sibelius updates (and reported to work in Sibelius 6
> too) so I guess it's "stable enough." I know a number of people are finding
> value in having this as open source software, even if the software to run
> it is not.
>
> -Andrew
>
> > On 16 Oct 2017, at 15:52, James Sutton <jsutton@dolphin-com.co.uk>
> wrote:
> >
> > I understood that the Sibelius plugin format is proprietary,
> non-standard and subject to change, which also is true of Sibelius itself.
> > Difficult to see how this could be the basis for a 'reference'
> implementation of anything.
> >
> > I guess MakeMusic would be unwilling to lose control and revenue from
> this valuable software.
> >
> > best regards
> > James Sutton
> > Dolphin Computing
> > http://www.dolphin-com.co.uk
> > http://www.seescore.co.uk
> > http://www.playscore.co
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> On 16 Oct 2017, at 12:55, Jeremy Sawruk <jeremy.sawruk@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> I strongly agree with this. Ideally, I think that both the Finale and
> Sibelius plugins should be open source so that the MusicXML community has
> reference implementations.
> >>
> >> However, if MakeMusic does not want to open source these plugins, I
> think the community should still work to create open source reference
> implementations of its own. It may take a while for those implementations
> to reach the same level of Dolet, but at least they would be truly open
> source.
> >>
> >> On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 5:17 AM, Andrew Hankinson <
> andrew.hankinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I wholeheartedly agree with this proposal.
> >>
> >> I can also recommend the plgToMSS tool, developed by Tido, as a way of
> making developing in ManuScript suck a whole lot less and make it much
> easier to use standard text editors and IDEs.
> >>
> >> https://github.com/tido/plgToMSS
> >>
> >> -Andrew
> >>
> >> > On 16 Oct 2017, at 10:08, Adrian Holovaty <adrian@holovaty.com>
> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > I believe it's in our community's interest for the Dolet Sibelius
> plugin (http://www.musicxml.com/dolet-plugin/) to be open source.
> >> >
> >> > The plugin routinely produces better MusicXML than Sibelius' native
> exporter — I encourage all my customers to use it, if they use Sibelius —
> but it still can be improved.
> >> >
> >> > As far as I can tell, the plugin is developed by a single person. As
> I find bugs in the plugin's generated markup, I'd love to be able to report
> them via a public tracker and perhaps even directly contribute fixes to the
> code myself. Please accept my offer of free labor! :-)
> >> >
> >> > This would benefit *everybody* in the world of MusicXML, for obvious
> reasons. The plugin will get better, faster — which means everybody using
> Sibelius gets better interoperability across the MusicXML ecosystem.
> >> >
> >> > There's also prior art for this: an open-source Sibelius plugin for
> generating MEI. https://github.com/music-encoding/sibmei
> >> >
> >> > Who agrees with me? Can we make this happen?
> >> >
> >> > (To preempt arguments that this is out of scope for this working
> group: I'd argue this is clearly within "the spirit" of this group's
> mission, if not necessarily within "the letter." We all want to reduce
> friction with day-to-day MusicXML workflows.)
> >> >
> >> > Adrian
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > Adrian Holovaty
> >> > Soundslice: https://www.soundslice.com/
> >> > Personal: http://www.holovaty.com/
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
>