Metadata-Version: 2.1
Name: MusicRaft
Version: 0.9.95
Summary: GUI for abcplus music notation.
Home-page: https://gitlab.com/papahippo/MusicRaft
Author: Larry Myerscough
Author-email: hippostech@gmail.com
License: LICENSE.txt
Platform: UNKNOWN
Description-Content-Type: text/markdown
License-File: LICENSE.txt
Requires-Dist: mido (>=1.2.0)
Requires-Dist: python-rtmidi
Requires-Dist: lxml
Requires-Dist: numpy
Requires-Dist: PySide2
Requires-Dist: pdfrw
Requires-Dist: ghostscript

MusicRaft
=========

'MusicRaft' is a GUI for the ABC(plus) music notation, built around python and the Qt GUI toolkit.

__*A note regarding this documentation:*__ *The documentation located on my gitlab page
<https://gitlab.com/papahippo/MusicRaft>
 will tend to be more up-to-date than the documentation located on 'the python package index' <https://pypi.org/project/MusicRaft/>*

The following screenshot will, I trust, paint the first thousand words
of documentation:

![Alt text](https://gitlab.com/papahippo/MusicRaft/raw/master/screenshots/Musicraft-lockdownWalz.png?raw=true "Editing ABCplus music source while viewing graphical ouput")



## Installation

Musicraft is written to be work on various platforms and has been verified
to work correctly under Linux, Mac OSX, and Microsoft Windows 10.

The details of how to install - and of what may go wrong - are
inevitably different for different platforms, so are treated in
separate subsections below:

### Windows

Unless a suitable version of python is already prsent on your system,
browse to...

https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/

... and select and install a suitable python release.
 Musicraft is known to work with python 3.6, 3.7 or python 3.8; it definitely will NOT run
under python 2.x;If you are offered the option to add
(e.g.) the python directory to the execution path, accept this option.   

Now start a command prompt and enter the command
(exact format will vary according to downloaded release):

python3.7 -m pip install
_warning_: Correct operation of Musicraft on Microsoft Windows depends
on the presence of the correct version of `msvcp140.dll` in the correct
directory. This is not yet handled automatically. In the meantime,
Windows users may prefer to use the standalone binary (see below).


Musicraft is built and must be installed using python 3. Therefore a pre-requisite is that 
python 3 is present on your computer. This will invaraiably
already be the case on Linux systems.

On Windows, you will likely need to install python3 yourself.
This can be done using the download link at:

The situation with MAC OSX depends on which release you are using;
this link explains the situation with MAC OSX Catalina:
<https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/376077/is-usr-bin-python3-provided-with-macos-catalina> 

When installing python 3, be sure to check the option (if offered!) to
add the python directory to the execution PATH.
  
Musicraft and its dependencies can now be installed from
the python package repository.
The exact syntax will vary across platforms but will be something like...

`pip3 install --user musicraft`

... or ...

`python3 -m pip install --user musicraft`

The `--user` is not essential but it avoids permission problems,
 e.g. having to use `sudo` on Ubuntu (etc.) Linux systems.


__bundled 'command line' tools__

The following 'command line' tools are automatically installed alongside
musicraft into 'share' direcetories...

* `abcm2ps` to derive graphic scores from ABCPLus code
* `abcm2ps` to derive midi files from ABCPLus code
* `abc2abc` to transpose ABCPLus code

... but don't worry, you won't actually have to use these from
the command line! This is handled 'under the surface' by
musicraft.

To keep the setup scripting simple, executables for Linux, Windows
and Mac OSX are all installed, but of course, at run-time only the
appopriate native versions are run.

## Running musicraft

Starting musicraft is a simple matter of ...

`python3 -m musicraft -S [abc-source-file-name ...]` 
 
 .. or something very similar. 

The `-S` - which can also be entered in the long form `--share`
instructs musicraft to use the 'bundled' versions of the command line tools.

It is possible to associate this action with all `.abc` files so that a 
double-click on such a file in the file manager is sufficient to start
musicraft. How to do this depends on the operating systemcontext; perhaps
this will be (semi)- automated in later releases of the musicraft
package.

By clicking on the tabs `abc2abc` `abc2midi` `abcm2ps` `ps2pdf`
and `abcm2svg` of the`error/diagnostic output` panel you can check whether musicraft
is finding and executing the 'command line tools' properly. If not, 
you can find the version of these tools for your system from
the sites listed  under __ABCplus music notation__ below. After doing this, you omit
the`-S` when starting musicraft and it will use your specially installed versions,

A few start-up scripts are also included. These are really a left-over from
the time before I got the '-m' approach working but are left in as potentially
useful. Where exactly these get installed - and whether that location
is conveniently within the execution path - depends on your OS and system set-up.  

#### Debugging

Musicraft writes some 'on the go' diagnostic information to the `System` tab of
the `error/diagnostic` panel. Actual error oinformation (more properly:
information written to `stderr` as opposed to `stdout`) is written
in italics.

More such 'on the go' diagnostic information can be obtained by setting...
* `MUSICRAFT_DBG = 1

... before starting musicraft. Inevitably, perhaps, the choice of what
debug info to output is governed by my issues encountered recently, not by
your issues encountered today, so this is not guaranteed to be helpful!  

Debug info ouput can also be requested by '-D' or '--debug' on the command
line - or explicitly suppressed by '-ND' or '--no-debug'. These overrule
any setting of `MUSICRAFT_DBG` from the environment.

The 'command line programs' write their output to the approprite tabs
of the panel: `Abc2abc` `Abc2midi` and `Abcm2svg`. The last of these
actually relates to `abcm2ps` and is so named because we always use it 
to produce SVG not PS output.
 
 
Musicraft was originally designed to work with `Qt4` via either `PyQt4` or
`PySide`. This software is however becoming more and more deprecated in
favour of `Qt5` via either `PySide2` or `PyQt5`. Accordingly, Musicraft has
been reworked to support these; indeed, musicraft now uses `PySide2`
by default. This behaviour can however be overruled by settinging an
environment variable:

* `MUSICRAFT_QT = PyQt4`
* `MUSICRAFT_QT = PySide`
* `MUSICRAFT_QT = PyQt5`

Not overruling this setting is treated as equivalent to...

* `MUSICRAFT_QT = PySide2`

__Important note regarding 'Qt' dependencies:__

The musicraft package specifies `PySide2` as a dependency, so it gets installed
whether you like it or not. This is only likely to be  problem if you're
running on a very old OS version that doesn't support `PySide2`, `Qt5` etc.
In this case, you may wish to pu t your own package together, baed on
the code in this repository.  

Recent OS versions (e.g. Ubuntu Linux 18.04, Windows 10) may only
suport 'Qt5', not the older, deprecacted 'PyQt4'. In some cases, there is
a workaround for this. For example, on Ubuntu 18.04 one can install
PySide by:

`sudo apt-get install python3-pyside`

__Standalone binaries__

I have created (using PyInstaller) a standalone executable version  of Musicraft for 64-bit systems under
[Windows](https://gitlab.com/papahippo/MusicRaft/blob/master/dist/win_musicraft.exe) (tested on Windows 10).
 
I have currently disabled the standalone binary for Linux. (don't ask;
it's a long sad story!)

I haven't looked into the desirability or feasibility of a standalone binary version
for Mac OSX but am open to suggestions and guidance.  
 
 ## Using Musicraft
 
 #### window layout
 
 Before you start inputting music to Musicraft, it is a good idea
 to tweak the window layout to suit your monitor layout:
 
 * If you have just one screen, first click the full-screen button,
 then if necessary use the mouse to to drag the vertical line which divides the
 text area from the score area so that each is wide enough.
 
 * If you have two displays next to each other, you may want to
 drag the whole musicraft window to straddle the two, so that one shows the abc source code,
 the other the score.
 
 * With two or more displays, you may want to 'undock' one or more of the
 three panels by dragging their top line(s) - identified by the texts
 `Editor`, `styled output` and `error/diagnostic output` to
 an empty area of one of the screens.   

*warning:* if you stretch the `styled output` window too much
you may encounter 'extra' unresponsive scroll-bars. This is a bug which I
am having difficulty fixing!

#### ABCplus music notation

It is unlikely that you have got to this stage without
knowing at least something about ABCplus music notation.
Even so, it's always good to have some resources at hand.
The list below will get you started and lead you to more goodies:

* <http://abcplus.sourceforge.net/>
* <http://moinejf.free.fr/abcm2ps-doc/features.xhtml>
* <https://sourceforge.net/projects/abcplus/files/Abcplus/abcplus_en-2019-12-20.zip>

#### Typing in your tune(s)
Assuming you are familiar with ABCplus notation (if not, see previous section!)
you can now simply type the ABCplus code into the `Editor` panel.
The score panel will change as you type. In doing this, musicraft auto-saves
your abc code into a temporary directory; nonetheless, you must not forget to
save your source code regularly with control-S (or via the file menu). 

### More Documentation

I try to keep this README down to size, so that impatient users can
get up and running quickly. Quite a lot of supplentary documentation
is available in teh `doc` subdirectory inculding an
[index](doc/INDEX.md).


