Nota

Intro

Nota brings engraved music notation into LaTeX documents. It is intended for articles, teaching material, musicological examples, critical editions, and other documents where scores need to sit naturally beside text.

Instead of exporting and cropping a new graphic after every musical edit, add the score file to your project and write \score{file.mei}. Nota measures the space available in LaTeX and engraves the music for that space. The document still controls its margins, columns, page breaks, and surrounding text.

Nota accepts MEI, MusicXML, Humdrum, ABC, Plaine & Easie, and MuseScore files.

Demo

The image above is a contact sheet of the complete A4 article demo. It includes music flowing between paragraphs, full-page scores, a short example inside a figure, and several score formats.

There is also an A3 two-sided book demo with asymmetric margins, larger notation, and a two-column passage. Both PDFs are generated from the LaTeX sources in examples/latex/.

Usage

Load the package and include a score:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{nota}

\begin{document}

Text before the music.

\score{opening.mei}

Text after the music.

\end{document}

Score layouts

\score{piece.mei}          % systems flow between the surrounding text
\score[full]{piece.mei}    % full score pages inside the LaTeX document
\score[example]{motif.krn} % one compact example, suitable for a figure

The default layout renders each system separately, allowing LaTeX to break a long score across pages. full creates pages as tall as the document's text area. example keeps the breaks encoded in the score and crops the output to the musical excerpt.

Options

font

• Description: Music font passed to Verovio. The default is Leipzig.
• Values: Leipzig, Bravura, Gootville, Leland, Petaluma, or another font installed for Verovio.
• Example: \score[font=Leland]{piece.mei}

unit

• Description: Staff size. One unit is half the distance between two staff lines. When omitted, Nota scales it from the current LaTeX font size.
• Values: A number from 4.5 to 12.
• Example: \score[unit=8]{piece.mei}

indent

• Description: Indents only the first system of the default, in-flow layout. The default is no indent.
• Values: Any TeX dimension smaller than the current line width.
• Example: \score[indent=15pt]{piece.mei}

full

• Description: Uses full-page score layout. It is a flag, not a key-value option.
• Values: No value.
• Example: \score[full]{piece.mei}

example

• Description: Preserves encoded breaks and produces a compact excerpt. It is a flag, not a key-value option.
• Values: No value.
• Example: \score[example]{motif.krn}

font, unit, and indent can be set in three places:

\usepackage[font=Leipzig, unit=7]{nota} % document default

\begingroup
  \notasetup{font=Leland, unit=8}       % until this TeX group ends
  \score{chapter.mei}
\endgroup

\score[font=Bravura, unit=6]{piece.mei} % this score only

The setting nearest to \score wins. full and example can be used on an individual score or inside a grouped \notasetup; they are not package options.

Score formats

Nota supports the formats accepted by Verovio, including:

• MEI: .mei
• MusicXML: .musicxml, .xml, .mxl
• Humdrum: .krn
• ABC: .abc
• Plaine & Easie: .pae
• MuseScore: .mscz when the MuseScore CLI is installed

How to install and run

Nota is not on CTAN yet, so install it from the repository.

You need:

• LaTeX 2022-06-01 or newer with graphicx
• Verovio on PATH
• rsvg-convert from librsvg
• Go 1.22 or newer to build the renderer
• MuseScore's mscore command only for .mscz input

Clone and install Nota into your local TeX tree and ~/.local/bin:

git clone https://github.com/manolisky/nota.git
cd nota
make install-local

Make sure ~/.local/bin is on PATH, then check the installation:

kpsewhich nota.sty
nota-render --version

Compile a document with:

xelatex paper.tex
nota-render paper
xelatex paper.tex
xelatex paper.tex

The first LaTeX pass records the scores. nota-render engraves them. The later LaTeX passes include the generated music and settle references. Output is kept in paper-nota/, and unchanged scores are reused from the render cache.

How it's made and technologies used

Nota separates document layout from music engraving:

1. The LaTeX package measures \linewidth, \textheight, and the current font size when it reaches each \score command.
2. It writes those measurements and the score request to <jobname>.nota.aux.
3. The Go renderer reads the requests and invokes Verovio for each score.
4. Verovio engraves canonical SVG pages using SMuFL music fonts.
5. librsvg converts the SVG pages to PDF for LaTeX's graphicx package.
6. Later LaTeX passes place the generated pages in the document.

The main technologies are:

• LaTeX for document layout, page breaking, and final typesetting
• Go for the nota-render command, caching, and concurrent rendering
• Verovio for music engraving and score-format conversion
• SMuFL for standardized music symbols and fonts
• SVG and PDF for portable, vector score graphics

Rendering is a separate build step, so Nota does not require --shell-escape.