Underscore: A Music Notation Editor

Screenshot of Underscore 0.5a pre-alpha in action. It's a pity none of the buttons on the toolbar work yet.

What is Underscore

• Printing Almost Works I can actually print a couple of bars. The barline logic is missing (as are the barlines), and it's still mostly broken.
• Code Posted It's mostly broken, but I've posted it anyway. Enjoy!
• Toolbar Added The combo is correctly filled with a list of known MIDI devices, but there isn't any MIDI playback support yet. And none of the other toolbar buttons work yet.
• New Font I've created the Tin Pan Alley font to go with the program. It's based on a the Brahms font I found in a PDF file somewhere on the internet. I'm still working on the Ingrid font, but I'm having trouble with the scanner.
• Better Grouping Logic Grouping is now a two-pass process. The first pass groups of eighth notes, and can deal with groups that contain a rest as the first or last element. The second pass builds beat-sized groups.
• Automatic Beaming Beaming works (more or less) in both directions.
• Added GNU General Public License. Underscore will be my first GPL application - once I get around to posting the code.
• Win32Lib font optimization. The device's font was set and restored on every write - a very expensive operation. This caused Underscore to move like a slug when there were a lot of elements on the screen. Screen rendering is now quite fast. The hack isn't 100% correct yet, though...

• March 7, 2000 - UnderScore 0.5a (150K)

Press the C key again to select a different clef. Repeated pressing will toggle through all the clefs:

Press K inserts a key signature:

Press K again, changing the sharps to flats:

And press K again toggles the flats back to sharps, and adds an additional sharp:

Press T for a time signature:

And press T again to toggle through the signatures:

The blue note above the staff displays the current note's duration. The red block indicates the position of the cursor. Pressing Enter inserts a note at the cursor position; pressing Space inserts a rest. The following keystrokes alter the attributes of the note that is inserted at the cursor position:

• Up: Move cursor up one step
• Down: Move cursor down one step
• 1: Set duration to whole note
• 2: Set duration to half note
• 3: Set duration to quarter note
• 4: Set duration to eighth note
• 5: Set duration to sixteenth note
• 6: Set duration to thirty-second note
• S: Add sharp to note
• F: Add flat to note
• N: Add natural to note
• .: Add dot to note duration

What's The Current Status

• Basic editing
• Multiple staffs
• Saves/Reads files

In addition, the navigation keys are broken.

The following are missing (roughly in the order or priority)

• Printing
• Chords
• Lyrics
• MIDI Playback
• Ties
• Line Thickening
• Part Extraction
• Cut/Paste
• MIDI file creation
• Speed