Re: Offer to help development: Convert MIDI to Lilypond

[David Kastrup]

Joseph Austin <address@hidden> writes:

> Lilypond Developers:
>
> I am offering to help with the project of converting midi2ly from C to
> Python, or more generally converting MIDI to Lilypond.
>
> Per attached, I understand an initial conversion attempt has been
> started and is awaiting completion and testing.
>
> I'm not sure if this is a good place for someone new to Lilypond
> internals to start,
> but it seems this should be a relatively independent utility so I
> shouldn't need a significant background in the internals.
>
> I may need a "mentor" to help get started with the nuts and bolts of
> Lilypond development.
>
> I've done programming for a living in C++, Java, PHP, and a few
> others, but not Python [too new] or C [too old],
> though I am somewhat familiar with both, and also somewhat familiar
> with the structure of MIDI.

You'd need to look at what the midi module (in the LilyPond source tree
at python/midi.c) does and redo it in Python.

I haven't looked at the code or its quality, but on the surface the task
would seem to be well-confined and should yield to someone with a bit of
willingness to muddle through and make himself more acquainted with
Python again.  It is well possible that there already exist suitably
licensed modules (GPLv3+ or compatible) capable of reading Midi files in
Python, but matching them to the current midi.c interface might be more
work than it seems worth at first glance.

One challenge will be setting up a suitable developing environment for
working on this problem and being able to build and test results.  You'd
likely want to get a suitable version of the LilyDev virtual environment
for that: ask on the developer list for details and/or look up the
available information in the "Contributor's Guide" to LilyPond (part of
its documentation).  You also might want to ask on the developer list
whether or not somebody will specifically act as a mentor to get you
started on the development.

All the best!

-- 
David Kastrup