Enc2ly - free access to the musical format Encore

Greetings from Brazil! I'm very happy that you are interested in my incredible hability to transform scores written with the application Encore (from GVOX, do not confuse with Adobe!) in a beautiful and well organized musical notation code for the application Lilypond.

First, about Lilypond, in a few words: that's a great application! Its final results, direct in PDF, are beautiful, they are very compact and clear for reading. The file format for musical notation consists in a human readable and editable code, the syntax is easily learned, it is enough well documented, and completely free.

Second, about Encore, everything the opposite to what I said about "Lily". Simple like that, the reason for my existence!

The following image demonstrates by fact what I tried to explain by words, it's a self-explanatory plot, I hope so...

Encore	Lilypond

And now that you are convinced about my usefulness on going from Encore to Lilypond, I'll show, with another image, where I fit in this proccess.

file.enc	transformation 1	file.ly	transformation 2	file.pdf

Actually it's very simple. You give me an ".enc" file, and I deliver to you another, with extension ".ly". So, now I'm ready to admit: yes, I am a spartan command-line program, did you think not, hum? Don't do that expression, man, life is good! The reason for this is very simple: if you use Lilypond, you don't need a graphical interface, do you? So, I am right to be like that!

But the good news (for you?) is: there are some higher level applications to edit lilypond files, through use of a graphical interface. In spite of this, in my opinion, one would rather use the most direct method, to access all the features of Lily. Nevertheless, for those who prefer the easy way, see the alternatives (but again, this will not free you from the terrible command-line, if you should use me to not be in need for rewriting music already worked with Encore!).

History

The Encore program is very popular in Brazil. It's one of the first graphical music editor to appear. It's enough simple to be used by any one musicist. If one wants to buy, probably the price isn't so high, because there are many better alternatives. But what really builds this popularity , I think, is the piracy. Generally, people don't want to buy programs, if they easily find serials to unlock the demo edition, enabling to use it unlimited, at no cost. I have to acknowledge that Encore has a great feature: simplicity. This leads to many limitations, but for the normal user, that's not so important, what really matters is the no-need to learn so much, in order to use it. So, that's not a matter of good quality, but easiness to (acquire and) use the application.

My creator is an amateur musicist, he plays flute. One time he found a site about samba and "choro", which provides several scores, however most of them are presented in the format Encore. Other site, which provides many scores ".enc" is: partiturasencore.com. Not wanting to use that program to read the musics, came to his thought creating me, a converter.

First obstacle: closed data format, no documentation about it, would it be possible to decode that file structure? But after a while, he insisted on exploring techniques to reverse engineer data (he found this link from the site Wosit, when searching for the DWG format, he found the name of Frans Faase...), and there came the first surprize: the "strings" command from GNU/Linux, showing that it is not a purely binary file, so probably it is not a cryptographed neither a compressed file format. After that, he firmly pursued the decoding goal, and suceeded! What a satisfaction, and soon, here I am!

Instalation

I'm a very simple program based on GNU/Linux, so after downloading my package, unpack me somewhere in your computer, and run these famous commands in your prefered terminal: "./configure; make; make install"

If you didn't understand what I have said before, wow, maybe you are not a linux user. If you really need my services, ask for help to some friend, or search on the internet about how to install a linux system in your computer. For beginners, I strongly recommend Ubuntu.

Limitations

The limits listed here are those which will not be fixed, due to the closedness of the Encore data, or due to careless of its users. During my first releases (alfa and beta), certainly there are some faults and probably many bugs, but time will push away these. And only the bad heritage from ".enc" will remain.

Old versions:

Encore files created by very old releases of this program (before version 4.2.1) probably won't be readable by me. Perhaps now and then there will be deciphered some more details about the old versions of the file format, however none may warranty that. If you have issues with some ".enc" file, please send it to my maintainer.

Timing check in measures:

Encore users often do not assure the total time of notes in each measure. I try to complete with rests, but after creating the ".ly" file, Lilypond will warn about contingent errors, and you can correct them with your musical instincts... Give special attention to music beginning with anacrusis.

etc.

I'm still a young boy, when I learn to take care of myself I'll put here other barriers which appear in my promenades...

How to contribute (ideas)

Contributions are welcome. Here follow some activities, that simple users or experienced programmers can do in order to help with my progress.

• Test the program, send problematic files ".enc" to my maintainer.
• Translate the few messages (~ twenty), that I'm able to show; I use the gettext infrastructure, so you are supposed to translate po-file, maybe using Poedit.
• Create import feature for some free and famous music editor.
• Create a graphical front-end, some clothes for me, to satisfy window lovers.

Another interesting thing is the possibility to convert to other formats besides Lilypond. One of the most prominent candidates being Music-XML.

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