http://sail.uwaterloo.ca/~sydewww/ugrad/workshop/1996-97/jeting.htm

[Klaus Peter Wegge <wegge_bEi_c-lab.de>]

Hallo,
 
Gerade gefunden im Internet, vielleicht interesiert es ja jemanden.
 
MFG Klaus-Peter
 
Forwarded message:
> Automatic Braille Music Production
>
>
> Student Contacts: Sasha Papayanis, Jana Ting
>
> Supervisor Contacts: Peter Roe, Systems Design Engineering, and Peter
> Hatch, Music Department, Wilfrid Laurier University
>
> Workshop Co-ordinator: David A. Swan, Systems Design Engineering
>
>
>
> Welcome to the Braille Music project!
>
> Objective
>
>      The objective of this workshop is to create a practical and simple
> method of producing Braille music. BACH: the Braille Automatic
> Conversion
>      Helper, is a prototype program developed to meet this need.
>
> Background
>
>      This project grew from the collaboration of the Music Department at
> Wilfrid Laurier University with Systems Design Engineering. It was
> recognized that there
>      is a need to quickly and easily obtain Braille music for visually
> impaired students at Wilfrid Laurier University. However, obtaining
> Braille music is
>      unfortunately a difficult and time consuming process.
>
>      Currently, music must be ordered up to a year in advance from the
> Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Otherwise, when no score is
> available,
>      teachers must manually input every ASCII equivalent for each note,
> octave, duration, barline and accidental using a Braille notation
> program called
>      EDGAR.
>
>      In an effort to improve access to Braille music, Sasha Papayanis
> and Jana Ting are designing an automatic conversion program that would
> translate
>      and print music from regular notation into Braille notation.
>
> BACH System Design
>
>      The BACH System consists of three main design components:
>
>      Input
>
>      MIDIScan was chosen as the input for two main reasons: usage of the
> NIFF (Notation Interchange File Format) standard, and its OMR (Optical
> Music
>      Recognition) capabilities. NIFF is a new standard that was
> developed to simplify the exchange of music notation between music
> editors, publishers and
>      scanners. OMR facilitates input procedures and minimizes the
> preparation time required by the end user.
>
>      Output
>
>      The output of this system uses another commercially available
> software package: Duxbury Systems Edgar. This product is a word
> processing package that
>      prints the output in literary Braille on a Braille embossed
> printer.
>
>      Processing
>
>      The BACH prototype program is the main component of this workshop.
> It was developed in C++ and the software development kit provided by the
> NIFF
>      developer, Tim Butler. The prototype accepts a NIFF file of single
> part music and converts it into Braille music notation.
>
>      There are four main functions in the BACH program: Read/Parse,
> Translate, Write and Error Checking and two libraries: Grammar Table and
> Braille
>      Equivalents.
>
>      Extensibility and flexibility are important criteria for the BACH
> design. For example, the grammar rules can be expanded to accommodate
> two-part music
>      and methods of abbreviating musical patterns, such as a sequence of
> eight notes. Furthermore, new music symbols can be defined in the
> Braille equivalent
>      library to expand the musical vocabulary of the BACH program.
>
> Conclusions
>
>      The intent of this workshop project was to the create an efficient
> system of producing Braille music. Originally it would take months to
> order music or
>      to type Braille music symbols in the Braille word processor. With
> the BACH prototype, the process of producing Braille music would be
> reduced to a
>      day. Furthermore, it would not require the end user to have an
> extensive knowledge of Braille music.
>
>      In the future, it is expected that NIFF will become more accepted
> as a standard format, and more applications will incorporate it. As NIFF
> becomes
>      more common, an increasing number of files will be made available.
> This would result in a smaller preparation time, and simplify the input
> process for
>      the end user.
>
> Recommendations
>
>      It is recommended that further development continue on the BACH
> program to expand its capability towards reading two-part or multi-part
> music. In
>      addition, the development of NIFF standards should be monitored as
> well as the availability of electronic libraries of NIFF files on the
> Internet.
>
>      We would like to thank our supervisors, Dr. Peter Hatch and Dr.
> Peter Roe for their advice and support of our workshop project.
>
>
>