Automatic formatting of music sheets through MILLA rule-based language and engine

Automated music formatting helps composers and copyists to speed up the process of music score editing by facilitating complex evaluations needed to write correct music sheets in terms of symbol positioning, justification, and so on. Delegating this activity to the computer allows the composer/copyist to increase the efficiency by letting him or her concentrate on more creative aspects. Music formatting is one of the most relevant problems of programs for music notation editing. Several written and non-written rules are typically applied by music engravers and composers. In this article, an approach for formalizing formatting rules and the related tools are presented. The approach is based on insertion, positioning and priority rules, and on the associated conditions for their activation. Conditions and rules formalized in the proposed approach are automatically executed by a formatting engine called "MILLA" (Music Intelligence Formatting Language). The Open Source and free distributed WEDELMUSIC editor (www.wedelmusic.org) is based on MILLA. The approach is presented together with several examples.