[musictlk] BMC: Braille Music Compiler

[Mario Lang]

Hi.

I am developing a free software project to work with braille music code.

Some of you might have stumbled across FreeDots[1], an older project of
mine also related to braille music code.

BMC currently deals with automated conversion *from* braille music code
to visual notation.  It currently uses LilyPond as a backend to produce
engraved music and MIDI performances from braille music code.

As a demonstration of its capabilities, I am developing a small braille
music code tutorial with examples in three variants: braille, visual
notation, and rendered MIDI or MP3 files.  This is something I have
always missed when I started to learn braille music.  I always wanted to
be able to *listen* to the examples given in the manual I was studying.
Have a look here: http://bmc.branchable.com/tutorial/

However, thats not the end.  As a proof of concept, I am also working
on the Goldberg variations in Braille.  This is also automatically
translated to visual notation and audio.  Have a look here:
http://bmc.branchable.com/goldberg/

BMC can handle unicode braille as well as the various locale specific
braille tables.  If your environment allows you to enter Unicode braille
directly, no problem, BMC will understand that.  However, it can also
backtranslate normal ascii characters to braille.  So if you know the
dot-patterns produced by the various keys on your computer keyboard by
heart, you can just enter braille scores for BMC by using your normal
computer keyboard.

The software is free.  It currently only runs on Mac OS X and Linux I am
afraid, and you will have to compile it from source yourself, since
there is no binary distribution yet.  I am planning to support the
Windows platform one day as well, but help in this area would be highly
appreciated.  If you are a Windows user with development
background and would like to make use of BMC on your system, please
consider collaborating so that a Windows version of BMC eventually can
become a reality.

Short and dense, but thats it from me for now.
If you have any input on BMC, please do not hesitate to write.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/freedots/

-- 
Regards,
      Mario Lang

Graz University of Technology        mailto:mlang at TUGraz.at
Department Computing               http://www.ZID.TUGraz.at/lang/
Phone: +43 (0) 316 / 873 - 6897
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