mei-tools-atom

A package for the Atom text editor to provide music notation rendering (with Verovio) and other tools for the development of music encodings in the MEI format (music-encoding.org).
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mei-tools-atom

MEI is an open-source XML-based system for the semantic encoding of music documents. This package, for use with the open-source Atom text editor, provides on-the-fly rendering of MEI into music notation with Verovio.

This package is currently under development and there are known performance issues with large files. Contributions are welcome.

Screenshots

screenshot - Chopin piano etude, paginated, magenta highlight screenshot - Berlioz symphony, paginated, orange highlight screenshot - Ahle chorale, not paginated, blue highlight

Current Features

  • As-you-type rendering into music notation with Verovio
  • Scale notation (zoom in or out) for ease of viewing
  • Pagination allows larger files to be rendered into notation with better performance
  • Flow measures horizontally for smaller files
  • Element under cursor in MEI code is highlighted in notation
    • this feature works by matching xml:ids, so if you have no xml:ids on your elements you will have no highlighting in your notation
    • if the current element has no xml:id, the parent <staff> and then <measure> will be checked and highlighted if an xml:id is found
  • Choose color for highlighting
  • Click on a note or other rendered notation element to take the cursor to the associated place in the MEI code
    • also relies on xml:ids, so elements without xml:ids do not provide this feature

Planned Features

  • Create function to automatically generate xml:ids
  • Address remaining performance issues with large documents
  • Integrate validation and autocomplete?
  • Integrate other XML helper tools and style sheets?

Installation

This package is published to the official Atom registry and can be installed by following their general instructions. If prompted to install dependencies, click 'yes' and allow installation to complete.

Once installed, use the package by following these steps: 1. Launch Atom and open an MEI file (menu item File > Open...). - this is a nice example encoding - save with the .mei extension (delete anything after .mei) - more examples of MEI 3.0 encodings can be found here 1. To display the notation, use the menu item Packages > MEI Tools > Show/Hide Notation, or simply press Ctrl Option Cmd M.

Dependencies

This package requires atom-language-mei, which will be installed automatically when this package is installed.

Validating your MEI

Only valid MEI can be rendered into notation with Verovio. To ensure your MEI is valid, an XML validation package is recommended. linter-autocomplete-jing was designed for use with TEI and MEI, so I recommend starting there. Please note that linter-autocomplete-jing requires Java Runtime Environment (JRE) v1.6 or above. Visit the package repository for details.

Gratitude

Thanks to Laurent Pugin and the MEI community for all their work on Verovio. Thanks also to Laurent for making Verovio available to me as a Node package.