It would be great if someone could develop a tool that would convert NWC or midi files to/from XML. Or does this exist already?
If not, is there a safe software to download to do these activities? With my own compositions, I am hesitant to upload files into cyberspace.
Yes !
Hi SEBC, Nicolas Hatiers on-line program converts from nwctxt to xml and viceversa
You can find it here :
https://www.niversoft.com/products/xml2nwc/ (https://www.niversoft.com/products/xml2nwc/)
HTH.
Hi and thanks for the link. It looks like it is an online tool that was once downloadable. Is it still downloadable? I can't seem to find that information on the website.
Does anyone know about the security of these kind of online conversion tools?
I'm going to answer the first part of my own question with what I just read in the version history:
Version 2.0
Rewritten as a server-side code for online processing, no need to install anything anymore
No need for NWC to be open or installed on the machine where the converter is used
The converter now generates a full .nwctxt file that can be open in NWC 2.5+
The offline, .NET version is not maintained and will not be available anymore
I'm using that website regularly these days. I don't think there's a security problem (not many people would want to steal .xml of .nwc files, and any good antivirus should catch anything that a hacker might attach to the download). The code it produces is pretty good, although not every other notation program out there thinks so: in my experience, Sibelius reads the xml files produced by this site very well, Dorico and MuseScore both read them moderately well, and LilyPad doesn't read them at all. Haven't tried importing them into Finale. Sibelius's skill in reading converted .nwc files is the principal reason I'm now using it to produce final copies of my music (still composing primarily in NWC).
There is another online tool, which only converts from NWC to MusicXML, which can be found here: http://nwc2musicxml.appspot.com/ . Unlike the Niversoft converter, it can directly read NWC 2.75 native files (.nwc extension)
There is also a thread in User Tools which contains a local-installable NWC to XML converter that was created by the NWC author. It's been a few years since it was updated (which sadly is also true of NWC itself) and requires installation of a suitable Java runtime environment. The thread can be viewed here: https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=9281.0
Not such a big difficulty.
Since a long time now, the .nwc files are simply .nwctxt files with a line of header and compressed.
Try saving them in uncompressed form and you'll see.