Arun’s (mostly carnatic) World

Version 1.2 of the Carnatic Music Notation Typesetter is now released. This release contains some new features, and a few bug fixes

New Features:
The following new features were added for version v1.2:

• Improved Look and Feel: This version includes an improved look and feel with the buttons in the notation input area being now part of a graphical toolbar.
• Open and Save support: Now, you can save your notation input locally as a file on your computer. Correspondingly after you open the typesetter, you can ask it load the open file. To save your input, click on the button. To load input from a file, click on the button. Please note the following that both open and save operations require the notation input to be sent to the server and back (Note: This is the recommended way a web-application should implement open/save, and it also is the most portable in terms of usability with different browsers).
• Support for khaNDa tripuTa tala has been added. Please refer to this example page.
• English notation output prunes out some script specific idiosyncrasies: In Tamil notations, sometimes you may be required to explicitly specify the n2 or ^n to force the typesetter to use the correct Tamil character for the na phoneme ( instead of ) . Also, based on your preference, you may explicitly specify s2 to direct the typesetter to use the alternate Tamil sa phoneme character () rather than the standard sa/ca phoneme character (). While such inputs will display as intended when rendered in Tamil, if there is a need to also see them in English, then the n2s, ^ns, and s2s are not meaningful, and can make the text less readable. Hence, the typesetter output prunes these out when displaying in English..

Please refer to the manual for more information on these new features.

Bug Fixes/Other

• A bug in handling of Tisra Eka Tala has been fixed. Previously the typesetter was laying out Tisra Eka Tala incorrectly as catuSra laghu, tiSra gati. It now correctly lays it out as tisra laghu, catusra gati.
  • Also Varnam layout for Eka Tala (all supported variants) was not working correctly. This has been fixed
• A bug in handling Tisra Triputa Tala has been fixed. Previously the Tisra Triputa Tala specification was being rejected with an internal error “no incoming layout”.

Version 1.1 of the Carnatic Music Notation Typesetter is now released. This release contains some new features, and a few bug fixes.

New Features:
The following new features were added for version v1.1:

• A new directive Gati, which allows you to switch the gati/naDai/gait of the song being notated. Please refer to this page for more information
• Enhancements to the PhraseEnds directive
  • Allow for the phrase endings to be shown in various styles. In addition to the already supported hyphens, they can be shown as “handles”.
  • You can now make the typesetter introduce trailing space after the phrase endings so that the individual phrases are prominently separated from each other for clarity. The amount of space to be given is also controllable.
• Notations in Tamil can (optionally) use the character for Sa (as in Siva, Sakthi), which allows for a fairer representation of the sound compared to the earlier (with qualifiers) or (no qualifiers). Note however that your system must meet certain requirements in order to make use of this. Please refer to this page for more information.
  • The transliteration scheme now also supports an explicit specifier for using the character for the sa sound. It is S2
• Enhancements to the Language Directive and also language specifier in Heading attributes
  • Control over how to display the Sa sound in Tamil.
  • Control over the size of the qualifier

Please refer to the manual for more information on these new features.

Bug Fixes/Other

• The PDF Manual now has bookmarks for easy access to various sections.
  • Each chapter about a directive also includes a Revision history section outlining the changes/enhancements across various releases.
• Fixed phrase endings display in IE. Previously the swara at the phrase end used to be shifted down.
• Phrase endings can be specified for a swara with a label of “-” (i.e. alternate representation of continuation). Previously — was rejected - now it is accepted as a phrase-end at a continuation swara.
• Notations that “run off” beyond the width of the display area are no longer forcibly clipped by the typesetter. Instead the control is left to the browser’s page setup and printing. Since the typesetter being a web-app never really can have absolute control over page setup, it was felt that forcible clipping was undesirable.