Editing Music engraving (section)

== Computer music engraving ==
{{Main article|Scorewriter}}

With the advent of the [[personal computer]] since the 1980s, traditional music engraving has been in decline, as it can now be accomplished by computer [[software]] designed for this purpose. There are various such programs, known as [[scorewriter]]s, designed for writing, editing, printing and playing back music, though only a few produce results of a quality comparable to high-quality traditional engraving. One such program was [[SCORE (software)|SCORE]] for MS-DOS. Scorewriters have many advanced features, such as the ability to extract individual parts from an orchestral/band score, to transcribe music played on a [[MIDI]] keyboard, and conversely to play back notation via MIDI.

Beginning in the 1980s, [[WYSIWYG]] software such as [[Sibelius (scorewriter)|Sibelius]], [[Mozart the music processor|Mozart]], [[MusicEase]], [[MuseScore]], [[Finale (scorewriter)|Finale]], and [[Dorico]] first let musicians enter complex music notation on a computer screen, displaying it just as it will look when eventually printed. Such software stores the music in files of proprietary or standardized formats, usually not directly readable by humans.

Other software, such as GNU [[LilyPond]] and [[Philip's Music Writer]], reads input from ordinary text files whose contents resemble a computer [[Macro (computer science)|macro]] programming language that describes bare musical content with little or no layout specification. The software translates the usually handwritten description into fully engraved graphical pages to view or send for printing, taking care of appearance decisions from high level layout down to glyph drawing. The music entry process is iterative and is similar to the edit-compile-execute cycle used to debug computer programs.

Beside ready-made [[Application software|applications]] there are also some [[Library (computing)|programming libraries]] for music engraving, such as [http://www.vexflow.com/ Vexflow] ([[JavaScript|Javascript]] library), [http://www.verovio.org/ Verovio] (C++, [[JavaScript|Javascript]] and [[Python (programming language)|Python]]), [http://guidolib.sourceforge.net/ Guido Engine] ([[C++]] library), and [http://manufaktura-controls.com/ Manufaktura Controls] ([[.NET Framework|.NET]] libraries). The main purpose of these libraries is to reduce time required for development of software with score rendering capabilities.
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=== Overview of music engraving libraries divided by programming languages ===
{| class="wikitable"
! Language/Platform
! Non-commercial
! Commercial
|-
| C++
| [https://github.com/burnson/Belle Belle Bonne Sage], [http://guidolib.sourceforge.net/ Guido Engine], [http://www.verovio.org/ Verovio]
|
|-
| HTML/Javascript
| [http://www.verovio.org/ Verovio], [http://www.vexflow.com/ Vexflow]
|
|-
| Java
| [http://www.verovio.org/ Verovio]
|
|-
| .NET Framework
| [http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/87329/PSAM-Control-Library PSAM Control Library]
| [http://manufaktura-controls.com Manufaktura Controls]
|-
| Python
| [http://www.verovio.org/ Verovio]
|
|-
|various platforms
|
|[http://www.seescore.co.uk/developers SeeScore library]
|}
-->