[BRX]

Mike,

is it difficult to implement SGV support for MSP?

This might also a stepping stone for XML and ABC support (which I'm aware will be far in the future).

[Zubersoft]

What are you wanting to use SVG files for? Sheet music?  I can add support for SVG files, but Google says they shouldn't be used for images over 200x200 in size otherwise it can take a long time to draw, which would negatively impact performance. Using it for full-screen sheet music seems like it would be extreme then, based upon that. I've certainly never had a request for SVG support before - what source would you be using to obtain the SVG files?

[BRX]

Yes, sheet music. I would generate them myself from ABC notation. I have to admit that I wasn't aware of the SVG format before discovering and working with ABC last year.

But since you asked yourself I reckon you haven't looked far into ABC and its possibilities so far.

I recommend to look at the utilities of Jef Moine

http://moinejf.free.fr/

which have made ABC notation so interesting. 

abcm2ps is a command line program which converts ABC to music sheet in PostScript or SVG format (or XHTML format).
It's used by many applications for displaying the sheet music (also available for Android).

abc2svg is a rewrite of abcm2ps  into Javascript which allows to use ABC notation with WYSIWYG display of the sheet music in browsers and on webpages

(see for instance https://zn-live.zupfnoter.de/ )

With the tools of Wim DeVree 

https://wim.vree.org/svgParse/index.html

you can convert MusicXML to ABC (and vice versa) and display it with abcm2ps/abcm2svg and much more.

See https://wim.vree.org/js/index.html for some impressive examples how MXML or ABC are read and converted to SVG and displayed.

Well, what I'm looking for in the future (probably far at the end of your todolist) is reading (and editing) ABC and MXML in MSP and displaying it with the capabilities
of the aforementioned utilities which would be something like "chordpro for real sheet music" because it's editable and transposable.

I have that somewhat with the programs EasyABC on Windows and A La Mode on Android already. But if this would be integrated in MSP with all its features of organizing, 
annotations, versioning and so, it would be simply great.

Back to SVG. I'm converting a lot of my sheet music to ABC for the aforementioned reasons. I can convert this to PDF for now as long as MSP doesn't feature ABC. But Jef Moine
integrates new features only into abc2svg so if I want to have those I have to use abc2svg and it's not always so easy to convert these to PDF. So a native display of SVG  in MSP (for now) 
would be quite helpful.

What I've seen so far didn't take long to draw sheet music and display it in browsers. Do you want to have some SVG files as examples? I'm no expert in all of this and just an interested
user. But if you have more questions I'll happily try to provide more answers.

[sciurius]

What is the problem with converting SVG to PDF? This should be a trivial routine.

[itsme]

I don't get what's the use case for SVG.
Displaying .ABC or .MSCZ (MuseScore) or MusicXML would make sense for me.
It might be interesting to take a look at http://www.seescore.co.uk

[Zubersoft]

SeeScore is definitely very interesting. I'll have to investigate that some more to see if it would work with my application architecture.

Thanks,
Mike

[BRX]

What is the problem with converting SVG to PDF? This should be a trivial routine.

It seems not to be so trivial. But I'm taking this more or less from this article

https://www.itsfullofstars.de/tag/rsvg-convert/

I'd like to convert at the command-line and had some success with the recommended rsvg-convert using this binary I found here 

https://opensourcepack.blogspot.com/2012...-tool.html

But depending how I generated the SVG and which fonts I used there have been problems with a conversion and quite a lot
warnings about missing fonts and sometimes unreadable output.

If you know a better and dependable way of conversion let me know.

[BRX]

I don't get what's the use case for SVG.
Displaying .ABC or .MSCZ (MuseScore) or MusicXML would make sense for me.
It might be interesting to take a look at http://www.seescore.co.uk

Well, SVG is the way the aforementioned developers choose to display the graphical score from the ABC or MXML files. Do you know EasyABC?
It's a WYSIWYG Editor for ABC files (essentially a wrapper for the ABC utilities) and has a score window which can also used as Viewer for ABC files.
Essentially the sheet is continually generated as SVG from the ABC input and displayed in the score window.

I don't know how these ABC utilties fit into Mike's architecture, but essentially they are doing the same (and more and probably better) as SeeScore and are free to use AFAIK.

I suggested SVG because I wanted to use my generated SVG files in MSP without the additional step to convert them to PDF. Also I thought if Mike is trying to do something with 
these ABC utilities SVG support is needed in MSP anyway.

[itsme]

In my understanding the goal is to integrate transposable scores in standard notation into MobileSheets.
Native support of a notation file format would be absolutely great and I fully support that request (but I know that it is not easy to implement).

To allow transposing the musical semantic is required. Transposing is not only shifting notes up or down. Stem direction, accidentals and so on have to be considered.
File formats like .ABC, .MSCZ (MuseScore) or MusicXML (and many others) specify that musical context. After the conversion to .SVG the musical semantic is not available anymore, .SVG describes dots and lines placed on a rectangle. Please correct me if I'm wrong. So imho in the workflows you are describing, .SVG is something like an intermediate format. The way how MSP comes from a notation file to the image on the screen should not be important for the user.

[BRX]

Well, I agree that the format SVG is nothing more than an image format much like PDF or JPG. And I asked for that because I thought it wouldn't be too difficult to implement and can be used like other image files or PDFs regardless how they originated and it would be of use later in case Mike decides to try the ABC programs I mentioned.

If Mike finds another and better way to display a transposable score from ABC, MSCZ and MXML all the better. 

But I probably haven't explained myself good enough, so again why I consider ABC and its utilities for a very good, maybe the best way to implement transposable scores and compatibilty with MXML into MSP.

ABC like chordpro is an ASCII based input format. It's quite simple for the basics and IMHO not much more difficult than cpro.

There are these utilites/programs already in existence to display a score, transpose it, convert it to MXML and back. They  are still actively developed and maintained by some excellent programmers and ABC 
enthusiasts. There are the necessary tools availabe for Windows as well as Android. And they are free.

So it's not SVG per se I suggested. It's just one output format of the ABC-tools (you can also get PDF, PS, XHTML). And you could edit or create the music in MSP itself similar to the ASCII Editor for CPro. That won't be
possible with other file formats. If MSP can read an process ABC I think the displayed scores should be generated and displayed only temporary anyway ( generated anew when transposed or changed from an editor window. Again, have a look at EasyABC on windows how changes in the source editor lead to changes in the WYSIWYG score window). SVG and the ABC routines are just there to use already.

As I said, I have no idea how all this is compatible with Mike's architecture and there are plenty of problems to solve. So I'm just saying, it's there for considerations and if it doesn't work with MSP I'd still like the SVG support to use SVG images (static) as source files like PDF and other images.

[kip]

A lot of this thread is over my head, but I can tell you one great reason to use SVGs for sheet music:

SVG supports layers.  In teaching situations, it's fantastic to be able to hide and display fingerings, phrasing, ossias, chord symbols, Schenkerian analysis (ok, that's a joke) etc etc.

Probably not a lot of users employ Xenakis or Cardew style graphic scores but there's some impressive possibility offered there too.

Being able to hide, display, and/or solo different SVG layers in Mobilesheets would be a game changer for my teaching workflow!