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TEXT STRINGS

Text strings are used in many different ways. A text string is enclosed in double quotes, and can contain any combination of letters, numbers, spaces, and punctuation. It can contain a \n to indicate a newline or \b to indicate a backspace, but otherwise cannot contain tabs or other control characters. If you want a double quote mark inside a string, it has to be preceded by a backslash, to indicate it is not ending the string:

"A \"word\" in quotes"

If you want an actual backslash in a string, it must be entered as two backslashes.

You can concatenate strings with a + sign. Thus the following are equivalent:

"this is a string"
"this is " + "a string"

Special characters

A string can also contain special music characters. These are specified by \(xxx), where the xxx is a name from the following table:

Clef

gclef       G clef (treble clef)
fclef       F clef (bass clef)
cclef       C clef (used for alto clef, tenor clef, etc.)

Time Signature

com             common time
cut             cut time
perfmaior       perfectum maior
perfminor       perfectum minor
imperfmaior     imperfectum maior
imperfminor     imperfectum minor
perfmaiordim    perfectum maior diminutum
perfminordim    perfectum minor diminutum
imperfmaiordim  imperfectum maior diminutum
imperfminordim  imperfectum minor diminutum

Accidentals

flat        flat
dblflat     double flat
sharp       sharp
dblsharp    double sharp
nat         natural

Notes

dn2n           half note with stem down
dn4n           quarter note with stem down
dn8n           eighth note with stem down
dn16n          16th note with stem down
dn32n          32nd note with stem down
dn64n          64th note with stem down
dn128n         128th note with stem down
dn256n         256th note with stem down
up2n           half note with stem up
up4n           quarter note with stem up
up8n           eighth note with stem up
up16n          16th note with stem up
up32n          32nd note with stem up
up64n          64th note with stem up
up128n         128th note with stem up
up256n         256th note with stem up
upflag         upward flag
dnflag         downward flag
mensurupflag   mensural upward flag
mensurdnflag   mensural downward flag

Noteheads

4n                   quarter (and shorter) note notehead
2n                   half note notehead
1n                   whole note
dblwhole             double whole note
altdoublewhole       alternate double whole
quadwhole            quadruple whole note (longa)
octwhole             octuple whole note (maxima)            
xnote                X-shaped notehead
diamond              open diamond-shaped notehead
filldiamond          filled diamond-shaped notehead
dwhdiamond           double whole diamond-shaped notehead
isostriangle         open isosceles triangle notehead
fillisostriangle     filled isosceles triangle notehead
dwhisostriangle      double whole isosceles triangle notehead
piewedge             open piewedge notehead
fillpiewedge         filled piewedge notehead
dwhpiewedge          double whole piewedge notehead
rectangle            open rectangle notehead
fillrectangle        filled rectangle notehead
dwhrectangle         double whole rectangle notehead
righttriangle        open right triangle notehead
fillrighttriangle    filled right triangle notehead
dwhrighttriangle     double whole right triangle notehead
urighttriangle       upside-down open right triangle notehead
ufillrighttriangle   upside-down filled right triangle notehead
udwhrighttriangle    upside-down double whole right triangle notehead
semicircle           open semicircle notehead
fillsemicircle       filled semicircle notehead
dwhsemicircle        double whole semicircle notehead
slashhead            open slash notehead
fillslashhead        filled slash notehead
dwhslashhead         double whole slash notehead
blankhead            blank notehead
mensurdiamond        mensural open diamond notehead
mensurfilldiamond    mensural filled diamond notehead
mensurdblwhole       mensural double whole notehead

Rests

owhrest         octuple whole rest
qwhrest         quadruple whole rest
dwhrest         double whole rest
1rest           whole rest
ll1rest         ledger-less whole rest
2rest           half rest
ll2rest         ledger-less half rest
4rest           quarter rest
8rest           eighth rest
16rest          sixteenth rest
32rest          thirty-second rest
64rest          sixty-fourth rest
128rest         128th rest
256rest         256th rest
mensurdwhrest   mensural double whole rest
mensur1rest     mensural whole rest
mensurll1rest   mensural ledger-less whole rest
mensur2rest     mensural half rest
mensurll2rest   mensural ledger-less half rest
mensur4rest     mensural quarter rest
mensur8rest     mensural eighth rest
mensur8rest     mensural eighth rest
mensur16rest    mensural sixteenth rest

Pedal

begped      begin pedal mark
endped      end pedal mark
pedal       pedal up/down mark

Ornaments

tr          trill
mor         mordent
invmor      inverted mordent
turn        turn
invturn     inverted turn

Miscellaneous

ferm           fermata
uferm          upside-down fermata
acc_gt         accent like a greater-than sign
acc_hat        accent like a "hat" or ^ (circumflex or "up-arrow")
acc_uhat       accent like an upside-down hat
leg            legato mark
dot            dot
wedge          wedge
uwedge         upside-down wedge
sign           sign for D. S.
coda           coda mark
upbow          up bow
dnbow          down bow
rr             "railroad tracks" or caesura (2 slanted lines sometimes put
               at the top of a staff to indicate the end of a musical thought)
measrpt        measure repeat
dblmeasrpt     double measure repeat
quadmeasrpt    quadruple measure repeat
copyright      C-in-circle copyright symbol
dim            diminished
halfdim        half diminished
triangle       triangle

music characters

Any of these music character names can be prefixed by "sm" to indicate a smaller version of the character. For example, "smup4n" is a small quarter note, as might be used for a "cue" note. Small music characters are 0.65 times as big as regular characters.

Various non-ASCII characters can be included in text strings. If you have a non-United States keyboard which can produce characters listed in the table below from the "Latin-1" alphabet, you can simply type them into strings as you normally would. If you want a character that your keyboard does not support, you can put them in strings by using their names in a manner similar to the music characters. For example, you can include an "a" with an acute accent on it in a string by using \(aacute), or an upside-down question mark using \(questiondown).

There are 2-character shortcut names for many of the letters with diacritical marks. The shortcut names consist of the letter and a character representing the diacritical mark. So, for example, \(aacute) can also be specified by just \(a'), \(Egrave) can also be specified by \(E`), \(ntilde) can be specified as \(n~), and \(Ocircumflex) can be specified as \(O^). The following table lists the diacritical mark names, their shortcut symbols, and the list of available shortcut names using those symbols:
acute ' A' a' C' c' E' e' I' i' L' l' N' n' O' o' R' r' S' s' U' u' Y' y' Z' z'
breve ( A( a( E( e( G( g( I( i( O( o( U( u(
caron v Cv cv Dv dv Ev ev Lv lv Nv nv Rv rv Sv sv Tv tv Zv zv
cedilla , C, c, S, s,
circumflex ^ A^ a^ C^ c^ E^ e^ G^ g^ H^ h^ I^ i^ J^ j^ O^ o^ S^ s^ U^ u^ W^ w^ Y^ y^
dieresis : A: a: E: e: I: i: O: o: U: u: Y: y:
dotaccent . C. c. E. e. G. g. I. A. z.
grave ` A` a` E` e` I` i` O` o` U` u`
macron - A- a- E- e- I- i- O- o- U- u-
ogonek c Ac ac Ec ec Ic ic Uc uc
ring o Ao ao Uo uo
slash / L/ l/ O/ o/
tilde ~ A~ a~ I~ i~ N~ n~ O~ o~ U~ u~

There are also a few special case shortcut names:
germandbls ss
quotedblleft ``
quotedblright ''
guillemotleft <<
guillemotright >>

The following charts list the full names of all of the available named characters, and shows what they look like.

extended characters

extended characters

extended characters

extended characters

One of the special characters is specified by \(space). This character appears as a normal space on output, but is not treated like a space when Mup is looking for word or syllable boundaries. The most common use for this is probably in lyrics when you want several words to be sung on a single note. Another use would be in cases where Mup would normally split up a long string between words in order to avoid running off the edge of a page, but you want to prevent that split.

Keymaps

Typing in the names for the non-ASCII characters can become tedious, so if you are using some of them often, defining a keymap may be helpful. The keymap context is typically used to take the letters you type in, and map them to some other alphabet, but it could be used for other kinds of mapping inside strings as well. You can define up to 100 different keymaps, and you can assign different mappings to different kinds of text. You give each keymap a name, and then can set parameters to that name to cause mapping.

A keymap context begins with a line with the word "keymap," followed by a string in double quotes, giving a name for the map. The name can be anything you like. This is followed by lines containing pairs of strings. The first in each pair is a pattern to be matched, and the second is the replacement. The pattern strings can only contain letters (uppercase or lowercase) and the equals sign. The replacement strings can only contain regular characters or the special named characters of the form \(XXX). They cannot contain other "backslash escapes" like changes in font or size. Mapping is done as strings are parsed, not when they are printed.

As an example, you could set up a mapping to allow something close to phonetic spelling on an English keyboard, but have the results come out in Cyrillic. The Mup distribution has an "include" file for one possible mapping of the full Cyrillic alphabet, but as a small example, to get the Russian word for "song" you could do

keymap "Russian"
	// map approximate phonetic equivalents to their Cyrillic symbols
	"e"	"\(afii10070)"
	"n"	"\(afii10079)"
	"p"	"\(afii10081)"
	"s"	"\(afii10083)"
	"q"	"\(afii10097)"

score 
	defaultkeymap="Russian"

music
	// enter Russian string phonetically
	title "Cyrillic: pesnq"

Picture of Mup output

In the previous example, the text string to be matched was only a single character, and the replacement string was also a single character, albeit one that normally has to be specified by a long name. Either or both can actually be multiple characters. So you could do something like

keymap "names"
  "Ted"  "Theodore"
  "Liz"  "Elizabeth"

and then "Ted and Liz" would become "Theodore and Elizabeth"

As another example, suppose you want to use various styles of arrows in different places, and would like to have shorter names. You could do something like this:

keymap "arrows"
	"=l"  "\(arrowleft)"
	"=r"  "\(arrowright)"
	"==l"  "\(arrowdblleft)"
	"==r"  "\(arrowdblright)"
	"=ll"  "\(arrowleft)\(arrowleft)"
	"=rr"	"\(arrowright)\(arrowright)"
score
	defaultkeymap="arrows"

block
  paragraph "=r between arrows =l";
  paragraph "==r between double arrows ==l";
  paragraph "=rr between pairs of arrows =ll";

Picture of Mup output

Patterns are matched left to right, using the longest pattern that matches. Thus for a pattern/replacement list of

  "a"	"X"
  "b"   "Y"
  "ab"  "Z"

the string "abba" would become "ZYX"

There are a number of parameters that specify what kind of text strings to map. These parameters are:
PARAMETER WHEN USED
defaultkeymap when nothing else applies
endingkeymap text on endings
labelkeymap staff and group labels
lyricskeymap lyrics
printkeymap print, left, right, center, title
rehearsalkeymap user-defined rehearsal marks
textkeymap rom, ital, bold, boldital
withkeymap "with" lists on chords

Having these different parameters generally makes it easy to do things like set a mapping for lyrics and titles, but leave musical directions like "Allegro" unmapped. To determine which mapping to use, Mup first looks up the specific parameter, and if that is not set, then it will fall back to using the value of the defaultkeymap parameter. Thus, for example, if you wanted only lyrics to be in Greek, with everything else left unmapped, you could define a Greek keymap and set

lyricskeymap="Greek"

Or if you wanted everything except "with" lists to be Cyrillic, you could do something like
defaultkeymap="Cyrillic"
withkeymap=""

Note that the special name "" is used to mean "no mapping." You can also set these parameters to nothing at all, which effectively "unsets" them. So if you later wanted "with" lists to also be in Cyrillic like everything else, you could just do
withkeymap=

which basically "unhides" the defaultkeymap value that had been overridden by the withkeymap value.

It is possible to change keymaps in the middle of a string by using \m(keymap_name). This might be used if you want just part of a sentence in a different alphabet:

   "This would be written \m(Russian)pesnq \m() in Russian."

As shown, an empty keymap name of \m() means to return to normal literal text, without any mapping.

Font and size changes

Strings can contain special codes to indicate changes in font or size. The font codes begin with \f, and can either be spelled out, as in the first column of the table below, or as the abbreviations given in the second column.

       Code              Abbr        Meaning

\f(avantgarde rom)      \f(AR)  Avant Garde roman font
\f(avantgarde bold)     \f(AB)  Avant Garde bold font
\f(avantgarde ital)     \f(AI)  Avant Garde italic font
\f(avantgarde boldital) \f(AX)  Avant Garde bold-italic font

\f(bookman rom)         \f(BR)  Bookman roman font
\f(bookman bold)        \f(BB)  Bookman bold font
\f(bookman ital)        )  Bookman italic font
\f(bookman boldital)    \f(BX)  Bookman bold-italic font

\f(courier rom)         \f(CR)  Courier roman font
\f(courier bold)        \f(CB)  Courier bold font
\f(courier ital)        \f(CI)  Courier italic font
\f(courier boldital)    \f(CX)  Courier bold-italic font

\f(helvetica rom)       \f(HR)  Helvetica* roman font
\f(helvetica bold)      \f(HB)  Helvetica bold font
\f(helvetica ital)      \f(HI)  Helvetica italic font
\f(helvetica boldital)  \f(HX)  Helvetica bold-italic font

\f(newcentury rom)      )  New Century roman font
\f(newcentury bold)     \f(NB)  New Century bold font
\f(newcentury ital)     \f(NI)  New Century italic font
\f(newcentury boldital) )  New Century bold-italic

\f(palatino rom)        \f(PR)  Palatino roman font
\f(palatino bold)       \f(PB)  Palatino bold font
\f(palatino ital)       \f(PI)  Palatino italic font
\f(palatino boldital)   \f(PX)  Palatino bold-italic font

\f(times rom)           \f(TR)  Times* roman font
\f(times bold)          \f(TB)  Times bold font
\f(times ital)          \f(TI)  Times italic font
\f(times boldital)      \f(TX)  Times bold-italic font

\f(previous)            \f(PV)  previous font
\f(rom)	\f(R)	change to roman in the current family
\f(ital)	\f(I)	change to italics in the current family
\f(bold)	\f(B)	change to bold in the current family
\f(boldital)	\f(X)	change to bold italics in the current family
Some of the special characters look better in some fonts than others. We have found that a few older PostScript interpreters unfortunately don't always implement all the special characters in all fonts, so if you have one of those, you may want to see if a newer version is available that corrects the problem.

If you need a font other than those Mup supports directly, it is possible to override Mup's built-in fonts with other fonts. This is described later in the section on "Installing other fonts."

The point size can also be changed. (A "point" is about 1/72 of an inch.)

   Code                   Meaning

\s(N)    change to point size N
\s(+N)   increase point size by N points
\s(-N)   decrease point size by N points
\s(PV) or \s(previous)	revert to previous size

The point size can range from 1 to 100. A font or size change will last until changed or until the end of the string. Any subsequent strings will begin with default font and size values, except in the case of lyrics, where font and size information is maintained separately for each staff and verse, and carried forward from measure to measure, and rehearsal marks, where the information is also carried forward. The default values can be set as described in the "Parameters" section. The music symbols are affected by size changes. If a music symbol follows a specification for italics, bold, or bolditalics, it will be slanted and/or made bold, as appropriate.

Here are some examples of strings:

"hello"
"( \(up2n) = 100 )"
"\f(TB)this will be bold. \f(TI)this will be italics"
"A \f(TX)\s(+12)BIG\f(PV)\s(-12) word"
"\f(newcentury boldital)Allegro"

Horizontal and vertical motion

It is also possible to specify a string that takes up more than one line, by putting a "\n" where you want to move to a new line. The place where this is most likely to be useful is for staff labels, which you may want to make multi-line, to keep them from becoming excessively wide. For example:

"Violins\nI&II"

A "\b" can be used to specify a backspace. This might be useful for adding underlines to text. If you wish to use letters with diacritical marks, you will probably want to use the special characters, described earlier in this section, rather than trying to construct them using the plain letter, a backspace, and the mark.

You are not allowed to back up to before the beginning of a line. Note that in all fonts except Courier, different characters have different widths, so using backspaces can be a bit tricky. For example, underlining a 5-letter word might require more than 5 underscores, if the characters in the word are wider than an underscore character. In general, it works better to enter an entire string, then backspace to add underscoring or accents, rather than doing them along the way. For example, "My\b\b___" will line up much better than "M\b_y\b_".

Vertical motion within a string can be specified using "\v(N)" where N is some percentage of the current font height. The distance may be negative for downward motion or positive for upward motion, ranging from -100 to 100. This might be used for creating superscripts and subscripts, although the next section describes an alternate way of doing that which is usually better. It might also be used just to line something up differently than Mup normally would. You cannot put newlines (with \n) in the same string with vertical motion.

Piled text, for superscripts, subscripts, etc.

It is also possible to "pile up" lines of text in a string. Some common uses of this could be for superscripts and subscripts or for figured bass notation. Some facilities to specifically deal with figured bass will be described in a later section, but here we describe the general-purpose constructs for piling text. A \: is used to indicate the beginning of piling. Any subsequent instances of \: in the same string will alternately turn piling off and on. When a pile is begun, the text size is automatically made smaller, and the text baseline is moved up, so that the first line of piled text is like a superscript, and the next like a subscript. If there are additional lines, they are placed below the subscript. By default, the lines in a pile are placed such that the last digit in each line will line up, or if there is no digit, the last character. However, you can force different alignment. A \| will force alignment at that point, or a \^ will force alignment at the center of the following character. A maximum of one alignment marker can be specified on each line of a pile. You cannot put newlines (with \n) in the same string with piling. A new line of the pile is started at each <space> character in the input string. If you want an actual literal space inside a piled line, it must be preceded with a backslash. As an example:

"Text\:superscript subscript\: back to normal.";
"This pile \:has\ literal spaces\ in\ it.";
"This pile \:h\^as align\|ment spec\^ified.";

Picture of Mup output

Slash through number

Another thing which is common in figured bass notation is to draw a slash through a number. Again, the section on figured bass will describe how to do that inside figured bass, but it is possible to put a slash through a number elsewhere by placing a backslashed slash after a number, like this:

	"6\/"
	"10\/"

Boxed or circled text

You can cause the text to be printed inside a box by placing a \[ at the beginning of the string and a \] at the end of the string. Similarly you can cause text to be placed inside a circle (or ellipse for strings that are wide) by placing a \{ at the beginning of the string and a \} at the end of the string. Boxed or circled text are not allowed in lyrics.

 "\[This is in a box\]"
 "\{This is in an ellipse\}"

Picture of Mup output

* Times is a trademark and Helvetica is a registered trademark of Allied Corporation.


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