Viritura - MNX based rendering engine, notation app, and a variety of MNX dev tools

[PeterYangIO]

Hi all,

I've been working on Viritura for the last few months, a music notation app built with MNX as the core data model. A lot of features started out as proof of concepts to validate the goals that MNX wanted to achieve, and I hope this project helps validate the aspirations of the MNX format. This includes such as

• Cleanly linked parts and score, with dynamic reflowing of layout
• Git based version control, with diff viewing between changes
• Exchanges well over the web, including a peer-to-peer system for live collaboration

In addition to giving out the webapp a try, I have a collection of tooling that may be of interest to the MNX community, as documented on https://viritura.com/mnx

Playground

https://viritura.com/mnx/playground

Includes all samples from the MNX Example documents except rendered live with a Rust based notation engine (compiled to wasm, to work in the web). The experience is interactive, so any changes to the code editor will reflect on the score preview

Example library

https://viritura.com/mnx/examples

In addition to the examples published on the MNX site, I have more of my own test snippets to cover more of the cases, presented using StorybookJS

MXL to MNX Converter

https://viritura.com/mnx/mxl-converter

Converts mostly any MXL to MNX, includes settings to include the Viritura vendor extensions to see what is natively supported by MNX already, and what needs to be backfilled by vendor extension

VS Code Extension

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Viritura.mnx-viewer

For those of you using VS Code, this extension lets you preview the rendered music within the app directly

GitHub

All of these projects are open sourced here: https://github.com/Viritura/Viritura

[adrianholovaty]

Wow, this is very cool! Excellent work!

I see you've made frequent use of the "_x" extensions — great to see that feature has been useful in practice. That's exactly what we've been hoping to see.

I'm curious to hear which of your "_x" extensions you think we should definitely add to MNX proper. (For example, I see caesura, instrumentId, midiProgram, trill, expressions, etc.) I'd highly value your feedback on that, given you have an entire engraving engine and editor working.

[PeterYangIO]

Couple of scattered thoughts regarding useful extensions worth building into MNX. Mostly based on me importing some of my own MXL projects and seeing what was broken. I will continue cleaning up my large score samples which I am shipping with the app (Rhapsody in Blue, Beethoven's 5th Symphony) which gives the best overview of MNX at it's fullest potential. Although the symphony is minorly blocked on not having support for movements/flows.

Caesura

This one I think would be a quick win; quite similar to the breath marks which are already implemented

Text

A lot of open GH issues regarding text. Expression text could be a good start since they naturally attach to dynamics, but I'm not sure if making it a subproperty of dynamic markings is the right direction to take. In music there's often expression markings without dynamic markings, and I don't want to go Dorico style where you have to attach a dynamic and hide it just to have standalone expression text.

Global text like rehearsal marks and system text, separate from tempo markings could be good to have.

Regular text opens another can of worms around possible playback / defining vendor specific instructions for sound patch or midi instrument switching. MNX has a similar concept already with the percussion kits. Does MNX want to be in the business of serializing known playing techniques like pizz, mute, bisb. and so on?

Ornaments and Trills

I think trills would be a good start, single instance, with the line spanner, interval definition. Other ornaments gets into playback semantics

More clefs

Percussion clef being missing from the clef.sign could go under the radar. Right now I have it implemented as just using a G clef with an overriden glyph property. Percussion I think should be added; tabs can be deferred until staff line counts gets implemented into MNX

Lines between notes

Glissandos would be a good addition to come in with the recent addition of arpeggio symbols on chords

Noteheads / chord symbols

Will leave this for the other open issues to continue discussing

Playback / engraving

This is what I think is best left to vendor extensions. This is the area I assume will mostly likely perpetually stay as an extension instead of being built into MNX directly, but again the concept of percussion maps in MNX existing already does make it tempting to define further playback hints into the spec

[rpatters1]

I don't seem to be able directly to open mnx files. Does it only open mnx files that it creates? If you would like to access up-to-date (schema-wise) mnx file authored by someone else, you can use Denigma Online to convert Finale files directly to MNX. But when I try, the MNX files do not open in the webapp.

[PeterYangIO]

HI @rpatters1 the intention is to work with any valid MNX. I deployed a new change so that error messages are printed to the screen. Could you share an error message and open an issue on https://github.com/Viritura/Viritura/issues? I come from Dorico land so unfortunately I don't have any musx files on hand to test with for Denigma. I will also need to do some further testing with the MNX export from MuseScore to check compatbility with other MNX writers.

[rpatters1]

It turns out it's working, but it's raising a lot of schema validation errors that my validator doesn't flag. If I can isolate a shareable test file, I'll post it, but so far all my test files open just fine. It's my big Finale scores that don't.

FWIW: We both seem to be on schema 34.

[mscuthbert]

Aside: Peter -- thanks also for reviving the Redmond Tech Orchestra (I'm guessing it's a successor to the old Microsoft Orchestra?) -- the fact that if you worked for Microsoft you could still play in an orchestra was a big factor in a bunch of my friends choosing to work there in the late 90s and early 2000s!

[PeterYangIO]

Yup, the original MSFT orchestra from the 90s and 00's went on for about 15 years before turning into the Kirkland Civic Orchestra in the mid 2010s. I play with them as a bassist, separate from Redmond Tech Orchestra which I helped kick start in 2024, as the successor as you have figured out from the name! There's a wonderful music community in the area I'm grateful to be a part of

[pavelstudeny]

I revived recently my earlier project to render music in pure HTML (i.e. no SVG, no canvas). This has several advantages, such as speed and flexibility. I don't have funding yet to do it full time, but I have already validated a few concepts. Seeing how far Viritura is, I guess it would be just an interesting project rather than inspiration or collaboration. Anyway, check it out at https://github.com/pavelstudeny/mxml2html.