There has been a few small enhancements in the MusicXML converter since my last post here, notably:
Support for transposition during xml->nwc conversion (it was already supported for nwc->xml)
Validity checks on NWC txt data, people are still submitting binary NWC files (naively renamed as nwctxt) now and then, so I added a clear (I hope) error message.
Finally, today I added code to remove invalid characters from XML files if it fails to import one time. The XML reader is very sensitive and apparently there is MusicXML files with badly-encoded international characters in them. Instead of simply rejecting the file, those characters are stripped in hope the conversion will work the second time.
There has been over 1700 files converted since the launch about 10 month ago. Not bad About 40 failed to be converted, but at least 25-30 of them would be converted properly today. The remaining ones were either really broken or wrong nwc format.
This was my first attempt at "donation-ware". Well, let's say I will probably stick to either fully commercial software or fully freeware in the future. I'm still very grateful to those who donated, or course, that at least paid for the hosting.
The converter produces layered staff. It's possible the staff you selected in NWC does not contains the lyrics. Disable "Layering in Edit Mode" in NWC View menu and you'll see where the lyrics are.
Due to popular demand by people recognizing the usefulness of the online converter but, in some situations, needing a converter when out of reach of any public network, I'm going to post here, once, the latest version of the old, unsupported .Net converter, which have limited lyrics support (1 line, usually misaligned), no fermata and a few other minor issues, and uses a fragile keyboard messages sending methods to insert the data in NWC which could break with each new NWC release.
The reverse converter is ready, so the whole product has been renamed MusicXML ↔ NoteWorthy converter. This is work in progress, but it's good enough to be used.
Note that matching voices from NWC to MusicXML is very tough, and impossible in some situations. NWC scores with split-direction chords will always have the wrong voice for several of the notes which aren't in a split-direction chord. This also means there will be dangling slurs and ties. For instance, the following pattern will always have a dangling tie:
And you will all be happy to learn that I'm working on the nwc->musicxml conversion code, it's going quite well and should be released soon, as soon as I have time to do extensive tests and polish the latest details!
When you see text that should have been a text object but instead is inserted as an extra lyric line, the issue comes from the scanning process, where the optical character recognition engine isn't always able to decide whether the text it found is a lyric line or not.
The MusicXML to NWC converter will not create new lyric lines out of text objects. The text objects were already included as lyric lines in the MusicXML file.
v2.1 features support for compressed MusicXML (*.mxl) files you can find here and there on several music websites.
And a tremendous improvement in lyrics alignment with the correct note. I just figured out a much simpler way to do it, and the result is almost perfect!
I know a few rare cases where alignment will still be incorrect, but in most situation that'll only be a matter of adding or removing a single _ out of a lyric line.
For example - If the xml says "<part-name>Sop</part-name>" would it be reasonable to say that this should become the "Staff Name" and "<part-abbreviation>Sop</part-abbreviation>" become the label and/or abbreviation ?
Also, is it your intention to maintain split direction chords on two different layered staves? Or may there in future be an option to create split direction chords on one staff?
[...]
v2.0.5 now handles part-name, part-name-display and part-abbreviation.
For split direction chords, the converter has to take what's in the MusicXML file. In MusicXML, each staff can have an unlimited number of voices (though most software support up to 4). A chord can be a single element with multiple notes, or several notes with a different voice each.
NWC staff supports a maximum of two voices, and sometimes only one (for instance, you can't represent v1: ♪♩ and v2: ♩♪ in a single NWC staff, or split chord CE;BD). So translating from MusicXML to NWC must be through multiple layered staves. Doing any further processing such as combining split direction chords on a single staff would require the converter to "understand" the music, calculate the timings, evaluate the limitations of NWC, etc.
To be efficient, the converter must be "dumb". It reads a MusicXML element, it pushes it in the corresponding NWC staff. No decision to take. The only place where it has to display a bit of intelligence is for lyrics alignment, and you know it's not perfect at all.
Good - both files (even the old version) should work now.
I also just modified the way the .nwctxt file is offered. Instead of popping the download dialog immediately, which can be confusing for some users and may also be blocked by Internet Explorer 7 and 8, you will be given a link to click to download the file. IE likes to be clicked on.
Another great advantage of the online converter is that I always have enough information to quickly fix any issue that may arise, sometime even without even being notified of an issue by the user.
For instance, about 12 hours ago someone (I don't know who) had issues with a file named "v588_10b_Quonium Tu", and (maybe) another user with a file named "Polovtsian Dances". The converter likely only displayed "Failed" to the user. But with the log information gathered, both issues are already fixed and the new version deployed.
The same process could have taken a few days and several emails back and forth with the old version. And other users wouldn't have been notified of a new version available.
Haymo, if you're running Internet Explorer, you cannot drag&drop the xml file on the button or on the page. You must click the button and select the file there. In Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari you can drag&drop the xml file on the button.
After you uploaded the .xml file, the converter should have almost immediately offered you to download the converted version (same name, but with .nwctxt extension). If your file was "Il Pastor Fido_1 Largo", my logs confirm it has been converted successfully.
Richard, you don't need to start a new thread or use the forums at all to report a bug or suggest an improvement. Just drop me a mail, this is not a matter of public debate anyway. My email is available everywhere on the converter page.
David, the old version of the program will not be made available anymore, sorry. Due to its nature, it only takes a small change in either NWC or Windows for it to stop working completely. I'm not even sure it would work under Windows 8, I have no intention to test it, and the mere existence of the .nwctxt format renders the whole conversion process of the old app completely obsolete.
The old program was about (only) 2000 lines of code. But nearly a third of it was used to push the converted code to NWC and could now be replaced by about five lines that saves the file. So it has to be rewritten anyway.
I chose the online way for convenience for me. To be able to push changes for everyone in a matter of seconds. To stop receiving emails from people who had problems with antiquated revisions, or who didn't want to download the 25Mb .NET 2.0 Framework and the countless updates to it.
I will continue to read this thread and advise, but for now I still think the online converter is the way to go.
And - check your Safari download dialog, maybe the download happens so quickly you don't notice it. Safari has the bad habit of automatically downloading anything it's offered to, without asking the user.
Rich, I don't have problems with Safari here, but anyway I don't think it's really an issue, people here are very unlikely to run it as their main browser, NWC don't run on a mac
The online version can't run on your desktop, and the desktop version can't be used online. And I won't maintain two different versions of the software, I already barely have time for one.
Ok, it works in Safari too. I had to change server configuration specifically for Safari to workaround this very old known Safari bug with file uploads (I saw it first filed in 2007...)
Safari and IE should be OK now, this was just a server configuration issue.
The Opera issue is a matter of content-type. There is no registered content-type for .nwctxt and apparently the one registered for .nwc does not give the result I expected. I reverted it to a default one and it works well.
My logs show your file has been converted properly.
I think the issue is during the download, there may be some quirks I have to polish with Internet Explorer. If you can't try with another browser, I will keep you posted as soon as I fix it.
Note that I'm planning to enhance this converter so it can do the reverse operation too, converting nwctxt to MusicXML. And this should be a lot easier to do. Except for lyrics...
It's been a while since I created the tool known as mxml2nwcc.exe, the MusicXML to Noteworthy converter that was using all kind of tricks to push the music data in Noteworthy.
With relatively new .nwctxt format, it's much easier to do the conversion, so all tricks aren't required anymore. I got a few free hours to work on the converter, and decided to simply rewrite it as an online converter. I think this move makes sense as it's much easier for me to push updates, it's much easier to install (you don't have to install it at all!), and doesn't require Noteworthy to be installed and running on the computer you run the converter.
So starting today, the old converter versions are not available anymore for download, and the new, enhanced online converter is available at https://www.niversoft.com/nwc.
And thanks to Phil Holmes who sent me some code and good ideas, the new version 2.0 is now able to handle many lines of lyrics.
I'll be open to comments, suggestions and bug reports, either here or directly by email. I've not been active at all in the NWC community lately, either in the forums or the newsgroups (which I don't even know if they are still used), but I'll try to keep an eye open to read your comments!
