MusicXML to Braille Music translation
FreeDots is a Free Software project to enable blind users to translate musical notation into Braille music.
Currently, the only input file format supported is MusicXML, a widely used standard for distributing musical notation digitally. MusicXML can be read and written by many different types of musical notation software, like OMR programs, music notation editing software and conversion tools to and from other formats. A detailed list of software supporting MusicXML can be found here.
GUI
FreeDots does also feature a GUI fronteend to view (and in the future also edit) braille music.
Known Problems
Since FreeDots is a very young project, there is still a lot to do. This is a list of things that are known to not work at the moment.
- Many braille music notation features are not yet implemented. Help from knowledgeable people is highly appreciated. This is your chance to do something valuable for the blind community.
- The manual (intended as a brief general introduction to braille music and as a user manual for Freedots) is missing a lot of content.
Feedback
FreeDots development is mostly based on enthusiasm. FreeDots will continue to stay free of charge for everyone. However, enthusiam is also sparked by something. If we know that we have users that use and like FreeDots, we are more likely to improve it even more! Additionally, FreeDots is Free Software, you are invited to contribute code or documentation to make it an even more useful project than it already is.
Source code
This project is hosted on GitHub.
To obtain a copy of the source code, execute the following command:
git clone https://github.com/mlang/FreeDotsor if GitHub is offline or my account has vanished, you can also do
git clone https://blind.guru/projects/FreeDots.gitto retrieve a repostiroy backup.