The software uses the header lines "name", "annotation", and "commentary" to mark up the output. For text above the initial, use "annotation".

I may change the popup menus to another form to give users more freedom with the numeric values.

Fantastic work, Richard! I've also been running Gregorio via command line and man can it be a pain. This interface is wonderful and very helpful; a great start!

This is very cool. I really liked Festa Dies, but this seems faster for sure.

I played around with this for a couple of hours last night, Richard, experimenting with the various fonts and settings. This is wonderful… thank you! I've already used it to notate a brief "Alleluia" which I'll sing at Mass tonight.

I've updated the tutorial pages, so that the examples (originally made in 2008) correspond better to the current behavior of the software.

Links:
Tutorial
On-line gregorio interface

Interesting question! There is an e-mail list for Gregorio users, and that is probably the best place for tips and Q&A about using the software. You can see info at http://gregorio-project.github.io/contact.html, or just go there to look through the archives.

Installing LaTeX and Gregorio locally allows you to create book-length documents that combine text, scores, and other graphics freely. For example, I created a 16-page booklet at home using LaTeX and Gregorio.

The on-line interface allows for a score only, with minimal text markup (a title and two headers).

Either way, a WYSIWYG interface is not included. There are WYSIWYG programs for creating LaTeX documents (such as "LyX"), but I don't think anyone has integrated Gregorio use into such a system yet.

Also, the open-source desktop publishing program Scribus has an experimental interface to Gregorio and LaTeX.

It's the big problem with Sibelius: Ben & Jerry just aren't into neumes. I went for job with them once. If they''d let me have it maybe I'd have changed their minds!

Adam:

I have a drag and drop program in Indesign. You are welcome to have it. Email me.

There needs to be ancient notation support built into Finale and Sibelius.
Or someone needs to build a decent drag-and-drop notation program for chant.

I think finale and sibelius should first worry about getting conventional notation "right" before switching to a new paradigm of music. A particular concern for me would be with lyrics. Barring highly melismatic chant, the syllables are generally not separated. When doing chant in InDesign, I type the text first, and neumes second--which is appropriate since the music in chant is subservient to the text. In finale or sibelius, you would have to enter pitches first, and especially in finale, the syllables would be separated, which to unexperienced chanters would lead to poor performance.

There is no central repository. The entire 1962 Graduale Romanum is on-line somewhere, which I would say is probably the largest collection of gabc files. There is a message from Chonak which mentions http://www.caecilia-project.org/, which might have been what I was thinking of, but it seems to have lost its content.

Do you think something like a wiki like the CPDL would be the best/easiest/most maintainable? I have experience in web programming, as does Chonak (it would seem!) but a wiki might be easiest. (Thinking out-loud, mostly:) Gabc’s format, though, especially because of its annotations, might be better suited to a custom-solution, which would make, for example, more precise searching easier.

we do have http://wiki.musicasacra.com and it is completely unused. So this might work.

I'm still having some trouble. Here is a Psalm from AVOZ I was experimenting with. There is a problem with the punctum cavum on watercourses; the line doesn't break. Here is my complete gabc file. Please critique this code so that I can learn.

name: Psalm 65;
commentary: Arlene Oost-Zinner;
initial-style: 1;
annotation: VI;
%%
(c4)The(f) seed(h) that(j) falls(ih) on(g) good(fg) ground(g.) (,)will(f) yield(gh) a(h) fruit-(fe)ful(d) har-(f)vest.(f.) (::ZZ)

You(f) have(gh) visited the land and wa-(hr)tered(gr) it;(g.) (,) greatly have you(hr) en-(g)riched(h) it.(f.) (:) God's watercourses are filled;(hr) (,) you have(hr) pre-(f)pared(gh) the(g) grain.(f.) (::Z)

Thus(f) have(gh) you prepared(hr) the(gr) land;(g.) (,) drenching(hr) its(g) fur-(h)rows;(f.) (:) breaking up its clods,(hr) (,) softening it with show-(hr)ers, bless(gh)ing(g) its(fr) yield.(f.) (::Z)

You(f)have(gh) crowned the year with your(hi) boun-(gr)ty,(g.) (,) and your paths overflow with a(hr) rich(g) harv-(h)vest;(f.) (:) untilled meadows overflow with it,(hr) (,) and rejoic-(hr)ing(f) cloth-(gh)es(g) the(fr) hills.(f.) (::Z)

The(f) fields(gh) are garmented with flocks and the valleys blanket-(hr)ed(g) with(h) grain.(f.) (:) They shout(hr) and(f) sing(gh) for(g) joy.(f.) (::)

That worked!

Ok, continuing the tutorial, what about adding space between verses to visually separate them? And what about that fancy R thing that indicates where to return to the Antiphon?

You know what I find to be the biggest problem with Gregorio? Typos are really really hard to spot. This is because everything looks so beautiful in the output. It seems like it just has to be right 100%. You find yourself having to sing very critically in order to spot problems.

.

I've just started using this, too, and it's fantastic! My favorite feature is the margin cropping, as I am not familiar enough with Tex to be able to format a book with it, and thus restricted to inserting the chants as graphics into another word processing program.

Sorry for the inconvenience of the arithmetic test, but I've seen my blog server (running on the same machine) occasionally come under automated overload attacks, so I put this test in as a precaution.

Yeah, I've sorta been doing that. I find myself, though, staying within the interface window… tweaking the code and seeing what changes result. Then, I try to remember to save the "final" code in a TextEdit document. (I'm on a Mac.)

There is no option for a dashed bar line in gabc (but someone please correct me if I'm wrong), and I think it is because Gregorian chant doesn't know dashed bar lines. At least, I have never seen them before.

Actually, there would be no dashed bar at all to indicate this — in my experience, the practice of singing the incipit (or not) would be an understood custom.

In the singing of the Divine Office in Latin, the chanting of psalmody employs the incipit for the first line of the first verse after the antiphon. For the Benedictus, Magnificat, and Nunc Dimittis (when able), the incipit is chanted at every verse. The responsorial psalm that Ben posted employs the pattern used in the former.

Here is a short, easy-to-follow Video Tutorial on "How do I use Gregorio?"

Veronica Brandt is also posting several more on the CCW Blog -- some she's posted already, and I understand more are coming.

The Gregorio server at http://run.gregoriochant.org/ is now running version 5.0.1.

There are various bug fixes; some changes involve features that aren't used in the web site implementation. Here are excerpts from the change log for version 5.

1. The header line "initial-style" is no longer available. This functionality is now performed by the \gresetinitiallines TeX command. (not implemented in the web site).

2. As of version 5.0, ledger lines are extended through notes on either side of a ledger line that crosses a stem, as long as the notes are within the same element.

It may not produce the exactly desired results. In order to get the results you want, you can override the automatic behavior in gabc:

[oll:1] will force an over-the-staff ledger line on a note.
[oll:0] will suppress an over-the-staff ledger line on a note.
[ull:1] will force an under-the-staff ledger line on a note.
[ull:0] will suppress an under-the-staff ledger line on a note.
The other oll and ull forms take precendence over and will interfere with the above settings, so if you are using them, you may need to adjust them to get the output you want.

Note: You may need to use a construct such as /! to keep notes that are separated in the same element. For example, abcV is two elements (ab and cV), so the ledger line on b is not extended to cV. In contrast, ab/!cV is one element, so the ledger line on b is extended to cV.

3. As of version 5.0, when the note after the oriscus is at the same pitch as the oriscus, the oriscus will point towards the first non-unison note after the oriscus or downwards if at the end of the score. Use the 0 (for downwards) 1 (for upwards) modifiers to force a different orientation.

4. As of version 5.0, elisions after a vowel centering prefix will not cause the center to be placed on the vowel at the end of the prefix. Since elisions are unvoiced vowels, this makes more sense than the previous behavior. However, if this change does not produce your desired output, you may surround the center manually with { and } in gabc.

5. The printing of the commentary box is no longer tied to the printing of the inital. As a result it is now possible to have a score which has a commentary but not an initial.

6. Dynamic line spacing when a clef change occurs at the end of a line is fixed so that the line after the clef change is spaced appropriately.

7. Glyphs for pes quadratum shapes with initio debilis are no longer missing. Use -fqg to engrave them.

8. Horizontal episemata bridge spaces more correctly. As mentioned earlier, you can prevent this by appending 2 to the _ on the note before the space you do not want bridged.

9. A rising note after an oriscus flexus will no longer generate a porrectus.

10. Translation text in a syllable with a trailing (forced) hyphen is no longer truncated to its first character.

11. A trailing (forced) hyphen in a syllable no longer generates a forced hyphen in the previous syllable.

12. A trailing space on a header line is now ignored (see #1269).

13. A pes whose second note is an oriscus now obeys the oriscus orientation rules.

14. Default spaces have been adjusted.

15. Notes are now left-aligned as if all clefs had the same width as the largest clef in the score. You can get previous behavior back with \grebolshiftcleftype{current}, or temporary force alignment until the end of a score with \grelocalbolshiftcleftype. See Documentation of these functions.

16. A clef change immediately before a line break (z) will now typeset the new clef at the beginning of the next line. An explicit custos (z0) immediately before such a clef change (or separated by only a bar) will be suppressed.

17. 9 new St. Gall neume glyphs have been added to the gregall font. 5 new St. Gall neume glyphs have been added to the gresgmodern font.

18. The left stem of Dominican plicae on lines has been shortened.

19. Clefs on the top or bottom line adjust the spacing as if there were a note above the top line or below the bottom line, respectively.

20. More cavum shapes are now available. To use them, simply add r in gabc to any note in a glyph.

21. Square brackets can be placed around notes by using [[ and ]] to surround said notes in gabc.

23. a font grelaon for Laon style adiastematic notation has been added (see GregorioNabcRef.pdf for details). This is a preview, backward incompatible change are possible in future releases.

24. Musica ficta signs: Add r6, r7, and r8 to a note for a flat, natural, or sharp (respectively) above the note.

25. A tag may be added to a syllable to indicate that its text should not overlap any previous syllable.

26. More general support for protrusions. The tag in gabc indicates where a protrusion should begin. There is an optional argument that allows the protrusion factor to be specified (in this example, .5). Additionally, the comma, semicolon, colon, and period are automatically protruded, with configurable protrusion factors. See GregorioRef for more information.

27. [nocustos] may be used in gabc to prevent a custos should the line end at that point.

If you post a short example pf gabc code to illustrate the problem, I can confirm it. If there is a malfunction we can ask the developers about it.