Noctave
LilyPond → MusicXML · PDF · MIDI
The LilyPond converter
Drop the LilyPond source of a piano piece. Noctave first checks that it is compatible, updates it with convert-ly, has it engraved by LilyPond 2.25, then converts it to MusicXML with the converter of its free library. You get the MusicXML to import into Noctave, the PDF and the MIDI file.
The limits · What is accepted · Adding your own pieces to Noctave
Convert a file
The converter opens soon.
It is ready, but not running on the server yet. Come back in a few days: this page will open by itself.
“Import into Noctave” downloads the compressed MusicXML (.mxl): on the tablet or phone where Noctave is installed, open it from the download notification and it opens in the app. Otherwise: Library, then Import.
What the MusicXML leaves out of the source:
The limits, simply
Piano alone
One or two staves, or a
PianoStaff(aGrandStafftoo). No lyrics, chord names, drums, tablature or choir.One file, 512 KiB at most
One piece per file, with a single printed
\score(a separate score for the MIDI file is accepted and ignored: Noctave writes the MIDI file itself). Your\includefiles must be put together in one; language files (english.ly,italiano.ly…) are accepted.60 seconds of LilyPond
Beyond that, the conversion is stopped. One at a time, in order of arrival; ten files per hour and per address.
Kept one hour, never reused
Your source is erased as soon as the conversion is over, the MusicXML, PDF and MIDI files after one hour (or at once, with “Erase now”). No account, no email address, no reuse: the privacy policy has the details.
What is accepted: a whitelist
LilyPond runs the Scheme it is given: a file could read or write on the server. Before anything runs, an analysis reads every element of the file and refuses at the slightest doubt, saying where and why (“Not compatible”, line and column).
Accepted
- LilyPond’s music, articulation, dynamics, layout and text (
\markup) commands the converter knows, and the variables defined in the file (upper = \relative c'' { … }). - In Scheme, literal values:
#'symbol,#'(1 . 2),#"text", numbers,##t,##f,#UP,#DOWN, colours… - A few harmless functions, with values:
set-global-staff-size,set-paper-size,ly:make-moment,cons,list,make-dynamic-script,ly:set-option 'point-and-click. - Files older than LilyPond 2.24:
convert-lyupdates them, then the updated copy is analysed again, strictly.
Refused
- Any unknown Scheme function, and
define,lambda,let,set!,define-music-function… $,#{ … #}, Scheme vectors, characters, keywords and quasiquotes.\includeof a file (languages aside),\book,\bookpart,\bookOutputName,output-filename.\postscript,\epsfile,\image,\verbatim-file,\applyMusic,\applyOutput,\on-the-fly.\repeat segno(D.S., coda), not read by Noctave yet; more than 100 repeats; control or invisible characters.
Of the 357 piano pieces of the Mutopia Project the free library converted without a difference, 308 pass this analysis as they are; the others define Scheme functions or have lyrics.
Then, a sandbox
convert-ly, LilyPond and the converter run under a system user of their own, in a bubblewrap sandbox: no network, a read-only system, no access to the site’s code or data, a work folder in memory, 60 seconds, limited memory, processes and file sizes. If LilyPond crashes, the rest of the server does not notice.
LilyPond (GPL) is used unmodified, as a separate program. The MusicXML is written by Noctave’s converter, the one that made the 377 pieces of the free library; it does not carry everything LilyPond can engrave (the page says so for each file).