3.1.2.3) What is MusicTeX, and how can I get it?
Description
This article is from the Electronic and Computer Music FAQ, by Craig Latta Craig.Latta@NetJam.ORG with numerous contributions by others.
3.1.2.3) What is MusicTeX, and how can I get it?
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 14:35:00 +0100
From: Werner Icking <Werner.Icking@gmd.de>
MusicTeX is a TeX-based music typesetter. It consists of
TeX-macros and special music-fonts for 300dpi printers (100dpi, 240dpi
are available, too); the MetaFont-source is included. It's capable of
printing scores of up to nine voices. The documentation contains a
ready-to-print dvi-file musicdoc.dvi and a lot of examples, most of
them by Daniel Taupin, the author of MusicTeX.
MusicTeX is available at a lot of servers ('archie musictex'
-- see entry on archie for details) but at most sites you will find
out-of-date versions because Daniel Taupin continuously enhances
MusicTeX :-). Actual versions can be found at:
ftp.gmd.de [129.26.8.90]: music/musictex/musictex.zip ... musicpk.zip
rsovax.ups.circe.fr [130.84.128.100]: anonymous.musictex musictex.zip ...
The latter is the author's ftp-site.
Good TeX-knowledge is a good basis for using MusicTeX with it's own fonts.
Werner (icking@gmd.de) MusicTeX-author: taupin@frups51.bitnet
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 92 15:51:55-0100
From: vanroose@esat.kuleuven.ac.be
TeX (and LaTeX) is a Public Domain typesetting system written by
D. Knuth, that has been implemented on `almost all' operating systems
(including DOS and OS/2: namely emTeX). Refer to the FAQ posting in
comp.text.tex for the necessary info for those who are not yet familiar
with TeX.
MusicTeX actually consists of a set of macros on top of TeX.
It is written by D. Taupin (taupin@frups51.bitnet), who is a
professional musician. It enables you to write music scores
having a very professional look. It is available via anonymous
ftp from rsovax.ups.circe.fr (130.84.128.100) [.musictex]
and also from many archive sites distributing TeX.
MusicTeX provides for practically all possible situations, including
multiple instruments each with multiple bars, and also for transposition.
TeX is definitely NOT a WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet) text processor;
this also applies to MusicTeX. Consequently, typing in the music can be
rather painful, especially when you are a beginner.
An example: to typeset (quarter)e (eighth)c (eighth)d (bar),
you have to type \Notes \qu e\cu c\cu d\enotes\barre
For people having Midi, the program Midi2TeX (see Q: What is Midi2TeX) is probably very useful, because it converts Midi output files to
MusicTeX syntax.
To use MusicTeX, you need a TeX implementation. For DOS, this is freely
available via anonymous ftp from rusinfo.rus.uni-stuttgart.de (129.69.1.12) in ./soft/tex/machines/pc/emtex and also from other ftp servers.
Documentation is available in both German and English.
You can also request the package from the author, Eberhard Mattes;
send eMail to him (mattes@azu.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de) for more info.
Finally, I should also mention the existence of MuTeX, written by
Andrea Steinbach and Angelika Schofer. It is less powerful than MusicTeX.
It is available via anonymous ftp from, e.g., ymir.claremont.EDU
(134.173.4.23) in [anonymous.tex.music.mtex].
Hope this is of any use to the musicians on the net.
Peter Vanroose
Electrotechnical Department, ESAT
K.U. Leuven, Belgium.
VANROOSE@esat.kuleuven.ac.be
tel. +32 16 220931
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