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Topic: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats? (Read 40568 times) previous topic - next topic

documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Is there a free/publicly-available documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats, and the compression algorithm used in NWC files?

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #1 –
wHY IsN'T AnYOnE ANsWeRInG???

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #2 –
Because the combination of musician and technician is a rare one. We do not know. I have a VERY highly technically skilled friend, who could analyse the file formats.
A few reasons why I will not ask him:
- It is a beautiful day, and I am off the computer in minutes
- He is a musician's nightmare, completely tone-deaf. The caricature, really.
- I think that the file format is Noteworthy's business, not ours.

A question, though: why do you want to know?

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #3 –
----quote-Reply 3 by NoteWorthy Online on 2003-12-04 11:43:41------

We do not publish the NWC file specification...
----------------------------------------------------quote-----
yOu'rE sO MeAn!!!

----quote-Reply 6 by John Kavanagh on 2002-10-06 14:42:02-----
There's at least one:

http://members.aol.com/abacusm1/
----------------------------------------------------quote-----
ANd dId hE PAy YOu JUsT tO GeT tHe NwC DOcuMeNtATIoN?!?!? aNd DiD YoU eVen GiVe hIm ThE nWc2 DocUmEnTaTiON FOr FrEe?!?!? DaMn YoU, MoRoN!!!

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #4 –
I repeat: why do you want to know?

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #5 –
Hey, Rob, do you think !ME! is trying to show us some sort of pattern with the capitalization?  Let 1 represent a cap and 2 lower case, and you get this.  I haven't factored in the punctuation.

1122
1221
1121
1211
2121
1212
1212
1112
2121
2111
21
1212
1212
1212
2121
2212
1212
1211
2212
1212
1211
1121
2121
2121
2112
121

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #6 –
!ME!, are you thinking of putting this pattern to music? It's yours, you know.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #7 –
Hey !YOU!, why don't you answer?

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #8 –
No, no, no!  You've got it all wrong!  !HE! only wants answers to statements.  !HE! started this post with a question, so of course he won't answer [abbr=This might be a trap for the self-appointed grammar police; something to get excited about!  Or it might be a typo, or a geniune display of ignorance ... we'll probably never know.]your's[/abbr].

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #9 –
Geniune, was that the cleverly hidden trap? If so, you fooled me into a reaction. <g> all the same.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #11 –
To bad I can't spell "geniune".  [abbr=This should be "too", too.  That makes two of them.]Two[/abbr] bad I didn't even notice it in your post or mine!

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #12 –
|HIM|, |IT|, |SHE|, |THING| and |THE BLOB| are rather quiet, now.
(Those who have read 'Bored of the Rings' will appreciate this.)

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #13 –
... I just discovered that the lyrics for "Beware of the Blob" (the original movie theme) were written by none other than Burt Bacharach!

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #14 –
Quote from: !ME!
Quote from: "NoteWorthy Online"

We do not publish the NWC file specification...
yOu'rE sO MeAn!!!

Quote from: "John Kavanagh"
There's at least one:

http://members.aol.com/abacusm1/
ANd dId hE PAy YOu JUsT tO GeT tHe NwC DOcuMeNtATIoN?!?!? aNd DiD YoU eVen GiVe hIm ThE nWc2 DocUmEnTaTiON FOr FrEe?!?!? DaMn YoU, MoRoN!!!
YEAH WATS WRONG WIT HIM!!! HE REALLY AINT A NICE PERSON!!!

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #15 –
You're so mean... Wasn't that a song by Carly Simon? <g>

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #16 –
>> Hey, Rob, do you think !ME! is trying to show us some sort of pattern with the capitalization?

Actually, I think I figured it out to be a song.
Much like the episode of Scooby Doo when they are asked to "FEED" the organ and watch the floor.

In this case, the music is much more complex than a simple descending pattern.

My theory is that the punctuation is meant as time signature/key changes however I haven't figured out that pattern.

Now, you may ask how does letters like "N" and "h" and "P" work into this equation of music .... simple.

if you take the scale A B C D E F G where C is middle C,
then the rest show the value above (upper case) or below (lower case) starting from "C".

When played out, it sounds like a Bach Fugue, however, !ME! has some errors that I would like to correct....

Instead of:
aNd DiD YoU eVen GiVe hIm ThE nWc2 DocUmEnTaTiON FOr FrEe

I think what he meant was:
aNd YoU eVen did GiVE HIM ThE NWC2 docUmEnTaTiON FOr FrEe

Hope that makes more sense to everyone now.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #17 –
I just re-read this thread, and still found it very funny. I suppose nobody corrected me, saying "it's You're so vain" by Carly Simon, because the song is too old?

Do you have a Midi-file as a result of the pattern? I am afraid I still do not understand !me!'s musical genius.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #18 –
Hi Rob,
given the context I thought you were misquoting deliberately...  :)
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #19 –
All points of grammar aside, the original request is not unreasonable. I have often thought about it, myself.

Current trends are towards XML: Plainly obvious user data, wrapped in tags that are meaningful. It is up to the program to handle the data. But surely, the user knows that a particular note has a certain duration, pitch, and appearance. It does not give anything away to make it obvious. In fact, in the NWC2 clips, it IS obvious.

I'm not suggesting that NWC2 use any form of XML, but it seems like disclosure of the file format would not hurt. That's not my call.

Currently, it is theoretically possible for anyone with NWC2 to open a NWC2 (or NWC1) file, copy out all of the staves as clips, and assemble the clips together in one plain text file. Then, if an appropriate transform existed, the text could be transformed to something like MusicXML, and imported into (say) Finale. That is not a useless capability, as I imagine that some NWC2 users would like to be able to pass data to Finale for final editing, or inclusion in a larger work. It would allow the NWC2 user to concentrate on actually writing music, then let "someone else" worry about publishing it.

Since the above method exposes all user information in plain text, it seems to me that some steps could be skipped if the transform worked directly on the (un?)-compressed *.nwc format, since the format apparently does not contain any non-user information.

What brings this to mind: A year or two ago, I had the occasion to meet a well-known church composer who actually sells his music and has it performed in many places. He uses Finale, and it bogs him down. As far as I could tell from looking at his own printouts, his original work (prior to commercial publication) could have been done in NWC2, with less likelihood of mistakes. In the end, the work goes to a standard publishing house, which presumably requires Finale or Sibelius files (or, MusicXML).

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #20 –
Now that is sound reasoning. I see two possibilities:
1. NWC produces an add-on which exports an NWC2 file to XML (from NWC to XML is not necessary, since you can always import in NWC2, and then export).
This would include updates in any cases of format changes/enhancements;
2. Noteworthy releases its (uncompressed) file format.

The economics would sound like this:
1a. The export-program could be sold separately.
1b. The export-program could be free, maybe attracting the kind of users you described.
2. Someone could write a conversion tool, and release it in the user group. Registered users then would have access to it. No guarantees in case of format changes, of course. This, too, might attract some new users.

Hmm... in any of these cases, there is money to be made. Who knows.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #21 –
"1. NWC produces an add-on which exports an NWC2 file to XML (from NWC to XML is not necessary, since you can always import in NWC2, and then export)."

Why stop there. Personally, I would be delighted if NWC imported XML files. Then I could cut out the MID(I)dle man when using SharpEye.

Tina

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #22 –
And put more Elgar in the newsgroup? Yes!

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #23 –
While I haven't explored the MusicXML format this sounds like a promising idea.

I do have a couple of questions though, just how extensive is the MusicXML specification :-
Does it provide page definition data?
Does it allow for text inclusions and specified fonts?
How much, if any, page layout information does it contain?
Or is it a purely musical format?

Midi import is probably not that big a deal since NWC requires midi output in order to playback a work.

So just how much programming effort is going to be required to create a MusicXML import/export capability?

It seems to me that creating portability using a file format like MusicXML has distinct advantages.  Especially for professional publishing.

For myself, I am content with NWC2s' printed output.  The few limitations that cause me concern are no big deal really.  However I don't speak for everyone.

One for the wish list? or should more discussion ensue first? E.G. are there other formats out there that compare/compete favourably with MusicXML (that are support by sufficient other players)
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #24 –
How about NIFF files? That's another Sharpeye output format. I have just downloaded a NIFF to text proggy but haven't tried it yet. I'm secretly hoping it is similar to NWC clip - not holding my breat though.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #26 –
Here is some interesting detail on MusicXML:

http://www.idealliance.org/papers/xml2001/papers/html/03-04-05.html

I rather think from this that MusicXML may well be a longer lived choice.  I do not suggest it as a native format, it is far too verbose, but for interchange I believe it could well be one of the best currently available answers.

Lawrie
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #27 –
NIFF is a binary format, not easily text-editable and not easily read by anyone. MusicXML is text-editable and is easily read by anyone. Forget NIFF.

I don't known whether MusicXML includes page specifications. It may permit explicit font specifications, or not (I don't know), but I am reasonably sure that it does not"embed" that kind of information, the way that glyph outlines can be embedded in PDF.

MusicXML is about music. The application figures out what to do with it. Rather like MIDI, except oriented towards sheet music content rather than towards electronic instruments.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #28 –
Besides, I suppose that most of you are aware that Microsoft will be using XML (instead of MS propietary formats) for MS Office:

QUOTE:
Jean Paoli was bouncing around the offices here in building 18 today. Who's he? One of the co-creators of XML. Why was he happy?Because Office just announced their new file formats all built in XML.
"We just turned on 400 million new people to XML," he told us.
Other reports?
Mary Jo Foley and a bunch of other reports. More will be appearing on Microsoft's Office XML page.
This is big news for developers.
Here Brian Jones, program manager on the Microsoft Word team, talks all about what it means.
This is a HUGE change for the Office team. For the first time the default file format will be open and accessible by anyone.
END QUOTE

Good enough for Bill G.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #29 –
Good enough for Bill G.

Just so long as he doesn't do to it what he's done to everything else he's gotten his hands on and hi-jack it!
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #30 –
I resent that. I'm too busy buying the telephone system to worry about music software.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #31 –
Shucks! The state of Massachussetts just decided that it would only use open formats for documents.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #32 –
Shows ya how much you know - it's The Commonwealth of [abbr=also, note the spelling...]Massachusetts[/abbr].

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #33 –
Maybe I'll just buy it, and change the name to "Principality" of Massachussetts. Better yet, Masachusets.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #34 –
Maestro chews it?

Maestro, choose it!

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #35 –
A lot of hankies.
Mass a choo sets.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #36 –
Mass a choo sets

A large quantity of pairs of false teeth?
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #37 –
Fits the bill better, thanks.
An African with a French name could be addressed as...
Massa Chiusettes.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #38 –
Or someone from Moçambique with flashy new socks.
Massa Chausettes.

Re: documentation of NWC and NWC2 formats?

Reply #39 –
HahAHa...