Ruby Power Tab Open-Source Project

[Ronald [PTA]]

Dear developers,

I want to take another try to initiate a truly open-source development
of a set of Power Tab Tools in the beautiful Ruby language - as open-
source as possible, i.e. licensed under the MIT License. I set up the
project at Google Code:

http://code.google.com/p/rubypowertab/

The first step is to convert Brads Power Tab Parser into Ruby. The
second step includes building a set of smaller tools based on that
parser. After that, a viewer/player based on wxRuby2 is the mid-term
goal.

If you are interested in joining the project, or do have any other
questions or comments, please let me know.

Best regards,
Ronald

[Yann Gilquin]

Hi Ronald,
could I ask you the reasons of your choice of Ruby language ?
Anyway your initiative is very interesting and the ultimate goal of
designing an open-source ptb viewer/player is a VERY good idea as Brad
has never open the door to the community. The meaning of my question
is linked to that goal, indeed don't you think main tools should be
written in C (core, parser, ...) and applications implementing these
tools in Ruby, python, etc...

Regards,
Yann

[Ronald [PTA]]

Hi Yann,

I definitely agree, that maintaining the core in C(++) would make
sense. I am also not a real Ruby expert or fanatic. However, the
beauty of the language admittedly is phenomenal. Besides this
fundamental fact, I had two main motivations regarding the choice: The
C++ code of the parser (beautiful code btw.) was released a long time
ago, and nothing (in terms of open-source development) happened since
then. Of course, there is a very nice open-source PHP version, and
some guy making a Mac OS X version closed-source and selling it.
Inspired by the PHP version, Ruby is also targeted towards Internet-
usage, but additionally features GUI possibilities of wxRuby2.

If it is a good choice will be seen whether the project takes off or
not. Let's keep fingers crossed ;-)

Regards,
Ronald

PS. I think Brad did a mind-blowing job (especially in terms of open-
source initiatives) by releasing the parser under the BSD license.
What you can see now is that someone else is making money with it, and
this is IMHO simply annoying.

[istomisgood]

I just wanted to draw your attention to tuxGuitar on sourceforge. They
have a ptb parser and tuxGuitar also has plugins for gp3/4/5 and
lilypond, musicXML and others. One possibility for this initiative
would be to jump on board with their efforts.

Either way I will be watching with interest.

Regards,
Thomas.

[Ronald [PTA]]

Good point! Especially since they finally released a stable 1.0.
TuxGuitar definitely has a different goal, because writing a full-
fledged editor is just a long-term goal of rubypowertab. But
nonetheless, there are certainly many interesting things included
there (especially the gp 3/4/5 stuff).

Regards,
Ronald

[Yann Gilquin]

That's something very interesting ! But what your post highlighted is
the musicXML format existence (I didn't heard about it).
IMHO what I think would be a very very useful initiative could be to
design some ptb to musicXML translater based on ptb parser in order to
keep data in some open format. I think it shouldn't be to much
work...
In that way tablatures front-ends or browser plugins could rely on
musicXML standard, this opens many doors (I guess already opened)

Your opinions ?
Yann

[Ronald [PTA]]

Yup, MusicXML is a fine thing, it was already considered in
http://samba.org/~jelmer/ptabtools/ before the parser was released
open-source. Brad also favors MusicXML over own tab-specific XML
languages (there were some discussions several years ago). The ptb<-
>musicxml converter is high-priority on the rubypowertab project, but
of course, it can be integrated right away in the C++ parser, e.g.
using Jelmers code.

[allpow...@gmail.com]

It doesn't support high and low melody's.

[Ronald [PTA]]

Ouch. Maybe that is what happens when you start writing an editor
before doing the ground work. 3-voice would definitely be one of the
most useful additions for the Power Tab Editor.

On Jun 29, 10:13 pm, "allpowert...@gmail.com" <allpowert...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Cacofonix]

Hi Guys,

After a long thought, I originally sent my opinions on this directly
to Ronald. It has been decided to post it publicly for discussion.

BTW, congratulations to Ronald for his success in working out a MPA
accepted agreement.

==== Summary ====
You (Ronald) desire a set of Powertab Tools and talk about a viewer/
player. You also want a completely open-source solution which is
written in ruby. Everyone, what exactly is the need and requirement
for this?

I'm going to describe the way I see the project and why. Regardless of
what I have written, I do appreciate the initiatives and the efforts
to keep the community active and alive.

Hopefully my reservations are just a misunderstanding.

==== Goals ====

Is the goal of the project:
1) A suite of tools complementing powertabs
2) A open source Powertab viewer/editor
3) A new editor/suite initially derived from the powertab concept
4) ... something else

==== 1) A suite of tools complementing powertabs ===
Why not take the existing tools from http://samba.org/~jelmer/ptabtools/
which are under the GNU license and improve upon them; add a Guitar
pro converter, score checker, etc.

These could be written in any language, and come under one project,
one release and be a useful set of knowledge and tools available to
all. The ultimate goal is to work with the powertab 1.7 format not
write a viewer/player.

The problem I see with this is the powertab editor is old, will be
superseded and people are moving away from it. It feels like a waste
to devote serious time to it.

However, having all the existing tools in one place/project where they
could be maintain and changed would be great. A policy would be
needed, ie all tools are cross platform and adhere to an open-source
license. It will all be loosely structured and written in lots of
different languages. This fits in with brad releasing the file format
parser.

==== 2) A open source Powertab viewer/editor ====
Why spend, what will be, a lot of time doing this? We already have a
free editor/viewer even if it's not cross platform (although it works
under wine) and does have a few bugs.

Other open source cross platform projects do import powertab files
even if it's badly, why not improve those instead.

I also cannot not imagine writing this in Ruby. Ruby is interpreted
(therefore comparatively slow and requires a ruby interpreter which
most people don't have) and hard to enforce structure over big
projects. Despite it's elegance, lots of code will still be duplicated
and no strict typing will make things hard to maintain in a big
project.

Surely the choice of language shouldn't have been made yet when what
is going to be developed hasn't been specified?

==== 3) A new editor/suite initially derived from the powertab concept
====

Comments about ruby apply. Have we officially given up on PTE 2.0? A
lot of effort is required and another cross platform open source
projects exist which could be expanded instead.

If you are to go down this route, a decision will need to be made on
what is it's ultimate goal will be before a programming language is
chosen.



I look forward to your responses and thanks for reading.

Mark

[Golbez]

So let's assume I have zero understanding of programming language. If
I were to read through this Ruby tutorial, would it be possible for me
to provide anything to the project? Or do I need to know a second
language to decode the parser to be able to write it to Ruby? I'm
pretty good at picking up on stuff.

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/quickstart

[allpow...@gmail.com]

I agree. Writing a parser in a scripting language is not fun
especially because the lack low level operators. The php power tab
parser had to define custom classes to do this. It took 1 month to
write a basic parser, and about 7 months to completely translate
Brad's classes.

It was great to port the parser to php for web based parsing, but you
are talking about extending much more. I personally think the original
classes that Brad wrote are the fastest and best way to accomplish
these things.

I think the most helpful thing for the community is to define a
project and a wiki for a score editor that accompanies the pta's
growing needs. Let the programmer's choose the language. Let the
community members define the requirements and interface.

On Jul 5, 2:56 pm, Cacofonix <smudge.farr...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi Guys,
>
> After a long thought, I originally sent my opinions on this directly
> to Ronald. It has been decided to post it publicly for discussion.
>
> BTW, congratulations to Ronald for his success in working out a MPA
> accepted agreement.
>
> ==== Summary ====
> You (Ronald) desire a set of Powertab Tools and talk about a viewer/
> player. You also want a completely open-source solution which is
> written in ruby. Everyone, what exactly is the need and requirement
> for this?
>
> I'm going to describe the way I see the project and why. Regardless of
> what I have written, I do appreciate the initiatives and the efforts
> to keep the community active and alive.
>
> Hopefully my reservations are just a misunderstanding.
>
> ==== Goals ====
>
> Is the goal of the project:
> 1) A suite of tools complementing powertabs
> 2) A open source Powertab viewer/editor
> 3) A new editor/suite initially derived from the powertab concept
> 4) ... something else
>
> ==== 1) A suite of tools complementing powertabs ===

> Why not take the existing tools fromhttp://samba.org/~jelmer/ptabtools/

[Robert Dietz]

Well, I've been following these discussions for some time.. Here's my 10 cents... The Powertab application will likely not move forward.  I have since moved to using TuxGuitar. It is an open source application which works under several different OS environments and will read Powertab files.  If you were to consider writing an player for use on the web, this is where I would put my time... I'm actually thinking of it... Bob --- On Sat, 7/5/08, Cacofonix <smudge....@googlemail.com> wrote:

[Alexander Rojas]

I agree completely with Robert,

Starting a new Powertab would take us a lot of time, in the time we as
developers would spend in doing something that loosely resembles
powertab we would add tons of new functionalities to tuxguitar. More
over, if you consider that you cannot cope with the policies of that
project we can branch it. But starting from scratch is not the way to
go.

On Jul 8, 1:25 am, Robert Dietz <beadgui...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well,
>
> I've been following these discussions for some time.. Here's my 10 cents... The Powertab application will likely not move forward.  I have since moved to using TuxGuitar. It is an open source application which works under several different OS environments and will read Powertab files.  If you were to consider writing an player for use on the web, this is where I would put my time... I'm actually thinking of it...
>
> Bob
>

> --- On Sat, 7/5/08, Cacofonix <smudge.farr...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> From: Cacofonix <smudge.farr...@googlemail.com>

> Subject: Re: Ruby Power Tab Open-Source Project
> To: "Power Tab Developers Support" <powertab-...@googlegroups.com>
> Date: Saturday, July 5, 2008, 11:56 AM
>
> Hi Guys,
>
> After a long thought, I originally sent my opinions on this directly
> to Ronald. It has been decided to post it publicly for discussion.
>
> BTW, congratulations to Ronald for his success in working out a MPA
> accepted agreement.
>
> ==== Summary ====
> You (Ronald) desire a set of Powertab Tools and talk about a viewer/
> player. You also want a completely open-source solution which is
> written in ruby. Everyone, what exactly is the need and requirement
> for this?
>
> I'm going to describe the way I see the project and why. Regardless of
> what I have written, I do appreciate the initiatives and the efforts
> to keep the community active and alive.
>
> Hopefully my reservations are just a misunderstanding.
>
> ==== Goals ====
>
> Is the goal of the project:
> 1) A suite of tools complementing powertabs
> 2) A open source Powertab viewer/editor
> 3) A new editor/suite initially derived from the powertab concept
> 4) ... something else
>
> ==== 1) A suite of tools complementing powertabs ===

> Why not take the existing tools fromhttp://samba.org/~jelmer/ptabtools/