mustaq
Has anyone checked this out? It was uploaded minutes after the user created an account. I'm very suspicious of this and don't have the tools (to protect my computer) or knowledge to tell if it's legit or dangerous.
I checked out his webpage and there hasn't been activity on it in 4 years (considering the last blog was in 2012).
Comments
No, Mike, I'm a serious musician, and I'm a developer since more than 30 years and now I want to make public some of my works, seek Youtube, Facebook and Research Gate for Nando Penteado, send me a pvt message and I will send you my mobile phone number and we can voice talk, I can send you some scientic articles I wrote in the on going course of my mastering degree, you will find out something about me at scholar Google too. This plugin is meant to create a way to convert a kind of music score that visually impaired people uses here in Brazil. You don't need to be afraid of a plugin that is released as a free software and gives you all the source code, and the returning MusicXML file won't damage any computer. But, all in all, just don't use this plugin and it's ok. Best regards!
In reply to No, Mike, I'm a serious by nandopen
I did send you a personal message before you updated the post with the upload link. Every other plug in for MuseScore I know of is hosted on the projects page and downloaded from there, not an external site. You have no real description of what the plug in actually does on the page, just a very vague idea. When I checked out the source of the file (your home page) I noticed that the last blog post was from 2012. It seemed your page could have been hijacked. Most of the time when this site gets attacked with spam, it's from people who have been members for only a few minutes. Everything looked fishy to me.
Please don't take this personal, nothing about your post sounded legit. I was more concerned about someone doing something vicious to an unsuspecting user than myself. That is why I started this thread. The vague description that you posted on the project page sounds like something a lot of people on this site are interested in as I mentioned in my e-mail I sent you. Please explain more what this plug in does, preferably on the project page, so those who are interested can use this tool and possibly give feedback. If you look elsewhere in these forums you will find that the developers of this program are very interested in integrating it into programs to assist the visually impaired.
In reply to I did send you a personal by mike320
Wrong, quite a few are hosted on GitHub. And actually this is the preferred method
I agree though that a better description on the project page would certainly help
In reply to Wrong, quite a few are hosted by Jojo-Schmitz
Yes, but I recognize GitHub as the location of the MS source. When I've seen those, I felt they were probably safe. They also had user names I recognized on them.
In reply to Yes, but I recognize GitHub by mike320
it' s ok! I created a Github mirror and yet uploaded a zip file here to, I have right now 6 children at the Laboratory of Accessibility of the University of Campinas that are going to use the plugin in this afternoon and it's always easier to give one single file than a pack to do the job, so I preferred a direct link to my server. As a matter of fact it is only a clone of ABC Import, so I can manage to convert files using my preferred language: PHP. At time I will update this plugin with better explanations, but the complete explanation is my master degree thesis that will be released on August, currently I have about 50 contributors in a project meant to convert ink scores in braille embossed scores, this plugin will give them a better visual feedback of the work before converting it into braille.
In reply to No, Mike, I'm a serious by nandopen
Hello! I have no opinion on where the files live and have no questions about the legitimacy of the plugin. But I *am* very curious about the work itself! The problem of accessible music notation is one I have been grappling with for years now, and in fact it was searching for tools to help with this that brought me to MuseScore in the first place.
I would be very interested in any articles you can provide on your work - especially if any are in English, but I'd settle for something I can run through Google Translate.
FWIW, my interest stems from an experience I had teaching music theory to a blind student and wanting a way to communicate notated music - so I could write out out homework assignments and tests, she could complete these assignments, I could read them and grade them, she could read and understand my comments, etc. We settled on the ABC music language as our way communicating and it worked well enough. On the minus side, there are some less-than-ideal aspects of ABC with respect to how screenreaders deal with the syntax. But on the plus side, there is a broad and robust set of tools out there to all sorts of interesting things with ABC, including render in standard notation directly or convert to MusicXML for import into MuseScore. So we cobbled together a working method that met our needs using these existing tools and some scripts I put together to automate some of the process.
I am still very interested in pursuing this work in some form, whether with ABC or some other language. Based on what I know of the state of accessibility in music notation software, it seems to me that right now, text-based languages are the simplest way for blind musicians to notate music, and the technologies needed to work back and forth with musicians accustomed to standard notation (or, for that matter, Braille) are quite straightforward. We just need more tools to facilitate this.
So again, I am very interested in your work and to hear more about how the kinds of scores used by blind musicians in Brazil.
In reply to Hello! I have no opinion on by Marc Sabatella
great, Marc! Let's get in touch for sure! We are facing the exactly same problem here, aka a way not only to make the blind user read but yet to write too, a process that we are calling here a "two-way road of accessibilty", which is the core of my master degree thesis, and our solution is to use text mode notation like ABC, Lilypond, etc, like you used too... Mustaq is a system that I started many years ago to speed up writing music using stenography and as I used a text mode notation, people at the university became interested on its potential use with blind musicians. I have written some article in portuguese and some in english, I will send you some links and we continue this chat. Good to hear this from you! Maybe it is the problem of many more people.