path: root/2021/captions/emacsconf-2021-gregorian--typesetting-gregorian-chant-with-emacs--spencer-king--main.vtt

WEBVTT

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Hello, everyone, my name is Spencer, 

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and today I'm going to tell you all 

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a little bit about how to typeset

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Gregorian chant sheet music 

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using Emacs and a tool called Gregorio.

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Now I expect many, if not all, of you 

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are unfamiliar with Gregorio,

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so we'll start off 

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with a brief overview of the tool

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and the appropriate syntax.

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Next, I'll show you how I've automated

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some of the workflow 

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using some Emacs Lisp functions 

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which I've slowly been turning into 

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a package called `gregorian-mode`.

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This will include 

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some live typesetting examples 

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to give you a better idea

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of how this all works.

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Finally, I'll share 

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some information with you

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about how you can contribute

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to the package if you'd like, 

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and how you can learn more about

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both Gregorio and `gregorian-mode`.

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And of course, all of the examples 

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from this presentation today 

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have been available online

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so you can review them 

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all at your own pace.

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Gregorio is a tool that takes

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a `gabc` text file and compiles it

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into a LaTeX document.

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Gregorio is included by default 

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with many LaTeX distributions, 

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so you may already have it installed

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on your machine if you are a user of LaTeX.

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You can see here on the left an example

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of some input `gabc` text, 

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and on the right, 

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what the compiled score will look like.

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Looking at the `gabc`, we can see that

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it starts with the clef in parentheses,

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and then following this 

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are the syllables of the lyrics

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and the corresponding notes in parentheses.

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For example, you can see that "EX,"

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the first syllable, 

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corresponds to a `d` note 

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in parentheses there, 

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and if you look at the right, 

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you can easily verify that

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in the output.

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Now the last thing 

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that I want to note here

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is that `gabc` files are all plain text,

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meaning they can easily be shared

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and can easily be tracked using

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your favorite version-control software.

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Since these are plain text,

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it's really pretty easy to integrate

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them into your existing workflows.

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The `gabc` format also supports 

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many optional header fields

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for adding more information 

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about your score.

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You can see all the supported fields

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listed below, along with

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some placeholder text.

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These fields are placed 

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at the top of a file

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and are separated from the actual score

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by the two percent symbols 

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seen at the bottom.

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After these symbols, you would have the

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lines of your score, 

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similar to what you saw

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on the previous slide.

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As I said earlier, 

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I've automated some of

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the score build steps using Emacs Lisp,

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and have started turning them 

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into a package called `gregorian-mode`.

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This is my first Emacs package, 

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so the code is rather messy at the moment, 

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and for the most part is just a wrapper

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around the Gregorio build process.

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However, I have made some 

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quality-of-life improvements 

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to the score writing, 

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and have some more planned for the future.

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You'll get to see some of that 

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in some live examples 

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in just a little bit.

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This package is not currently on MELPA

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at the time of recording, 

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so if you want it, 

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you will have to clone it manually

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from GitHub, but it is planned

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to be on MELPA in the near future.

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It just needs to go through 

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a little more rigorous cleanup 

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and testing.

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Now that we've covered the basics,

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let's take a look at an actual example.

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In this example, I'm assuming that

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my `gregorian-mode` package is installed.

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However, there is nothing in these steps

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that cannot be done manually 

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by just following the official

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Gregorio documentation.

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So if you don't want to use a package,

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you can do all of this pretty easily

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on your own just by following

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their documentation.

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So first we'll open up Emacs, 

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and in my case,

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I'm using the GUI version.

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So now that Emacs is open, we can call

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the function `gregorian-create-new-gabc`,

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and this will prompt us for a file name.

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So we need to pick out a name

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for our new score.

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So I think I'm going to go ahead 

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and name ours `emacsconf2021`.

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So you can see here that we now have

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a new `gabc` file with all of the

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optional header fields added, 

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and we can keep whichever of these

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that we would like,

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and we can modify them as needed.

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So for right now, all I'm going to change

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is this commentary; I'm going to update

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this source of words to `emacsconf`,

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and then at the bottom here, 

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this is where we'd go ahead

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and add our score.

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So I don't have time today to typeset

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an entire score, and I think that would

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probably be rather boring 

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for most of you to watch, 

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so I'll just demonstrate very briefly 

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with a few syllables and notes here.

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Okay, so now that we have our first few

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syllables and notes down, let's take a

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look at what our score actually looks

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like so far.

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So in order to do this, we're going to

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call the function `gregorian-build`,

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and what this function does is 

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it takes this score 

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and creates a LaTeX file for it

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and then goes ahead and compiles it

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into a PDF file that we can actually

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take a look at.

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And this does take a few seconds to run...

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and there it goes...

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so we can see here we have a new buffer

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with all of the output

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from that build process,

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but what we really care about

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is that PDF.

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So opening that up, you can see

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we have a very short score.

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So far we haven't done a whole lot,

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but if you go ahead and compare the

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score on the right

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with the file on the left,

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you can really pretty clearly see that

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those are, in fact, the lyrics

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that we wrote.

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You can see at the top right there,

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the source has, in fact,

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changed to `emacsconf`

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so at this point, we could go ahead 

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and just keep adding more lines, 

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more notes, and so on,

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and we would end up with

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a completed score.

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Now this process is great and all, 

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but as you can imagine, 

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more complex `gabc` files

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can quickly become pretty difficult

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to read with the notes and the syllables

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all bunched together.

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So to get around this, I've been playing

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around with an alternative format

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called a `greg` file.

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I have an example of that

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for you right here.

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So here we can see there are

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two files side-by-side:

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on the left, we have a `gabc` file,

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and then on the right, 

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we have a `greg` file,

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both of them for the same score.

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Now in my opinion, the `gabc` on the left

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is really rather difficult to read

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at a glance. 

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You can see there 

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the notes and the syllables 

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are really all grouped together

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pretty tightly.

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Looking at the `greg` on the right, 

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you can see that all of the

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header information is the same, 

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but the score itself 

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is split across several lines.

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The idea here is that 

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the notes and the corresponding syllables

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will be on separate lines, 

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one after the other,

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to help improve readability.

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Now the `greg` file format 

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is still a work-in-progress.

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It's really not

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set in stone at all,

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but already I think this is a pretty

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substantial quality-of-life improvement,

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and already `gregorian-mode` can, in fact,

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build scores from `greg` files 

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as long as they follow the conventions

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that you see in this file here,

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and I'm planning to have that 

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quite a bit more well-defined

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moving forward.

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Like I said, this is really still

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a work-in-progress.

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Finally, I want to end today 

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by sharing some resources 

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where you can learn more.

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First, you can learn more about

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the Gregorio project

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on their official website,

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and I have the link for that

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on this slide here,

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and this site has several detailed examples

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and a lot of additional information

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about the project 

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and about chant notation in general.

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It goes into much more depth

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than what we covered in this presentation,

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and overall, it's really 

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a fantastic resource

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for learning more about how to use

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the Gregorio software and more about

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the specifics of chant notation.

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Second, if you're interested in using 

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or contributing to `gregorian-mode`, 

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you can check out the project on GitHub

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with the link here on this slide.

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And if you're interested in helping out

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in any way, feel free to open an issue,

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and we can discuss further.

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And finally, all of the examples 

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from today are also available on GitHub,

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and that's the last link on this slide,

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and you can feel free to experiment

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with these and really just use them

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in any way that you'd like.

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Now that's all that I had for today,

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but I do want to take a moment 

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to thank you all

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for checking out my presentation,

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and I want to thank the organizers

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for giving me some time 

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to speak with you all.

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I hope that this was at least 

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a little bit interesting to some of you,

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and I hope that you all enjoy

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the rest of the conference.

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Thank you for your time today.

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[captions by Hannah Miller]