Hi. While this is not really related to Debian yet, I'd still like to use this list to annouce the functionality, since it might become a package at some (probably not too distant) point in the future. I am working on software to handle braille music code. I've already produced a sort-of finished application which can transcribe certain MusicXML files to braille music code (FreeDots). Since I went stuck in the complexity of the problem at some point, I took a few steps backward and started to write software to support the other way round: transcribing from pure braille music code to visual music notation. Braille music code is extremely compact and a very appealing way of entering music for blind people. You can either use a braille keyboard, but you can also type the letters which produce the desired dot patterns on a normal computer keyboard. I am now at a point where BMC, which is the name for the new project, is already useful for certain braille music code styles. The code for the porject resides on GitHub: https://github.com/mlang/bmc/ A wiki has been created on https://bmc.branchable.com/ This wiki also includes a braille music code tutorial which uses BMC to transcribe all provided braille music code examples to visual notation and a MIDI rendition. You can, for the first time ever, learn braille music code interactively: If you are reading an example, you can also *listen* to how it is supposed to sound, which should make learning braille music code tremendously easier. Additionally, sighted people can also attempt to learn a bit about braille music code, since they also have a visual rendition of the presented music. While bmc.branchable.com is a Wiki, this is still quite static. While BMC can already be compiled and run on Linux, and probably on Mac OS X, there is no port for other platforms (help appreciated) yet. Luckily, entering braille music code is as simple as filling in a multiline text field, so automated braille music code transcription can actually be made into a web service quite easily. And that is, what I did just recently. If you go to http://bmc.delysid.org/ you can experiment with the capabilities of BMC directly on the web. Braille input can be unicode braille. You can also choose a braille table which will be used to backtranslate the characters you enter to 6-dot braille. If you enter music which is considered valid by BMC, it is automatically transcribed to visual notation and MIDI using LilyPond in the background. If you want to give music you write to sighted people, you can download a PDF version and print it. To close the loop, all the examples on https://bmc.branchable.com/tutorial/ do also feature an "Edit" link which will place you right into the interactive music service on bmc.delysid.org. So in addition to the ability to listen to or look at visual renditions of the braille music examples, you can also use them as a starting point for your own experiments. If you are learning braille music code and wondering to yourself what would happen if you changed a certain note in the example given, you can simply invoke "Edit" and do the changes yourself, immediately seeing or hearing the result. Obviously I am posting this to announce the functionality to interested people. I am also looking for feedback and input of any kind. Braille is already something that just a fraction of world population can read. And braille music is a sub-culture inside a sub-culture. This limits the number of potential users quite a lot. So if you are playing with the services mentioned above, please make sure to drop me a mail with your impressions. Good or bad, no matter what, I *need* your feedback to ensure my work is going in a proper direction. BMC is developed on Debian of course. So if you'd like to play with bmc2ly, a braille music to lilypond compiler, you should clone the git repository and build a local version of BMC yourself. I will at some point create a Debian package, but the timing of that event largely depends on demand. If enough people are actually interested in the functionality provided by BMC, I will try to do a proper release + debian package earlier. So, if you are reading braille and always wanted to learn about braille music code, a very fascinating 6-dot braille coding, now is probably a good time. Go to https://bmc.branchable.com/tutorial/ and learn about braille music! If you are an experienced braille music reader, please consider contributing to the tutorial. It is certainly not finished yet. There are other aspects of braille music that are already handled by BMC but not covered by the tutorial. Also, if you have ideas for different wordings on the wiki, remember, its a wiki, you can edit it right away. Thanks for your time. -- CYa, ⡍⠁⠗⠊⠕
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