Humanities in Action

Starting with a PDF that is “born digital” such as output from a scorewriter like Finale, it is possible to treat the score simply as we would any other image. The PDF version will be incorporated into the PDF output when the LaTeX output is compiled, presuming the file is placed in the right location relative to the main TeX file. For HTML output the utilities pdfcrop and pdf2svg will produce an SVG image that will work well.

This procedure will work best for very short scores, since it is treated as an indivisible image. For LaTeX output, a longer score can lead to very poor page breaks, and large vertical gaps, especially in a preceding page. Or worse, the score might be longer than a single page, for which there is no solution. The piece below is inadvisably long and will likely demonstrate this behavior, though it is shorter than a page. Using scores authored, or converted to, Lilypond syntax should allow for better behavior of longer scores within a LaTeX document.

A score hosted on MuseScore

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musescore.com

is easy to specify with two ID numbers: the user number and the score number (examine the source for details). Then an embedded interactive player is nearly trivial to embed into HTML output. Work continues on a process to realize the score within LaTeX output.