computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...

, Philip's Music Writer or PMW, formerly known as Philip's Music Scribe or PMS, is a music

scorewriter A scorewriter, or music notation program is software for creating, editing and printing sheet music. A scorewriter is to music notation what a word processor is to text, in that they typically provide flexible editing and automatic layout, and p ...

written by

Philip Hazel Philip Hazel is a computer programmer best known for writing the Exim mail transport agent in 1995 and the PCRE regular expression library in 1997. He was employed by the University of Cambridge Computing Service until he retired at the end o ...

. It was mentioned in the

Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...

publication ''Computing in Musicology'' in 1993 and remains under active development as

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

Development

The software was originally written in order for Hazel to typeset

recorder Recorder or The Recorder may refer to: Newspapers * ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper * ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US * ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a news ...

music for his children. It was written in BCPL for an

IBM mainframe IBM mainframes are large computer systems produced by IBM since 1952. During the 1960s and 1970s, IBM dominated the large computer market. Current mainframe computers in IBM's line of business computers are developments of the basic design of th ...

at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

and also ran on a system running Panos, which was later sold as the Acorn Business Computer. The program was subsequently ported to Acorn's Archimedes running

Arthur Arthur is a common male given name of Brythonic origin. Its popularity derives from it being the name of the legendary hero King Arthur. The etymology is disputed. It may derive from the Celtic ''Artos'' meaning “Bear”. Another theory, more wi ...

and later ported to

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

systems. It began as

commercial software Commercial software, or seldom payware, is a computer software that is produced for sale or that serves commercial purposes. Commercial software can be proprietary software or free and open-source software. Background and challenge While sof ...

and was later released as

. On-screen proof-reading was rudimentary on the Acorn Business Computer, which used the

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

for screen output. The Arthur version initially ran at the

command line A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

, but was later converted to use the

WIMP Wimp, WIMP, or Wimps may refer to: Science and technology * Weakly interacting massive particle, a hypothetical particle of dark matter * WIMP (computing), the "window, icon, menu, pointer" paradigm * WIMP (software bundle), the web stack of Wind ...

and

outline font A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for print ...

Sibelius Jean Sibelius ( ; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest composer, and his music is often ...

was released in 1993. Hazel later observed that composers and arrangers generally preferred such

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

editors, while music engravers tended to prefer text input scorewriters, because of the increased degree of control available. The learning of such text input requires more time investment by the user, so the notation was designed with the aim of being "both compact and easy to learn". The

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

version (ported in 2003) is "back to its roots", being command line driven. The software uses PostScript fonts named ''PMW-Music'' and ''PMW-Alpha'', which were conceived by the author and Richard Hallas. The fonts were originally designed as outline fonts. , it remains under active development as

Features

Musical notation is provided to the software in textual form, which generates output to a printer or for saving in PostScript or Drawfile format. Simple

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

files and sound output can also be generated.

Reception

The software was mentioned in the

publication ''Computing in Musicology'' in 1993, and chapter 18 in Beyond MIDI: The Handbook of Musical Codes, MIT Press (1997, ).

References

{{RISC OS RISC OS software