Lyric hyphens after converting Sibelius 6 to XML

• Dec 28, 2020 - 08:21

Hi,
When I convert a Sibelius 6 lead sheet to XML and import into Muse 3, most everything looks really good. The only thing that doesn’t look right is the hyphens between lyric syllables. For instance:
Some - thing will come out as Some -thing. In other words, the hyphen comes out attached to the second syllable, instead of being centered between the two. Hope that makes sense.
Thanks! - Tommy (Bristol Stomper)

Comments

• Dec 28, 2020 - 18:53

Hi Jojo,
Thanks for your reply. I was worried about uploading someone eles's copyrighted material, so I wrote something with hyphens in Sibelius 6 and converted it to XML (attached.) Of course, I couldn't reproduce the problem! I will start adding things to the chart to see if I can find what was causing the problem...
Best, Tommy

Attachment Size
Hyphens Gone Wild.xml 104.4 KB

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• Dec 29, 2020 - 04:16

I'm no expert, but this does not seem like valid XML to me. The hyphens appear to have been encoded as ordinary lyrics rather than as lyric separators (which should involve special tags in the XML to indicate whether syllables begin or end words, etc. So I would say either the lyrics were entered incorrectly into Sibelius, or the version of Sibelius used to export doesn't export lyrics properly. Was this using the built-in export facility, or the Dolet plugin that I generally hear does a better job?

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• Dec 29, 2020 - 07:11

Hi Marc,

Thanks for your reply. The lyrics were created in Sibelius 6, and the hyphens look fine in Sibelius, i.e. fall between the syllables. This was exported using the Dolet plugin. Not sure what you mean by “valid” XML. But if you’re seeing something in the code that is not showing the hyphens as they should be, that certainly sounds like a clue. Wish I knew more what that clue means, though...

  • Tommy

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• Dec 29, 2020 - 15:43

MusicXML has a specification that describes how everything is supposed to be written in the file. This file was not written correctly. Lyrics like the initial "Dad-dy" should have been written with "Dad" set to "begin", "dy" set to "end", and no explicit hyphen. What was actually written is three separate lyrics "Dad", "-", and "dy", all set to "single". As far as I know, that's just wrong. Perhaps there is an update to that plugin that does a better job, or updating Sibelius itself might be necessary. But it seems to be a bug on the Sibelius side.

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• Dec 29, 2020 - 17:46

I certainly wouldn't discount pilot error on my part in Sibelius. But it's doing the same thing with all of the scores in one folder, about 25 or so scores. I converted the whole folder with XML. It also does the same if I convert the scores individually. I think it's something happening in Sibelius. Not a huge deal, just a lot of busy work to fix all of the scores in Musescore. I thought someone else might have encountered the same problem in doing a Sibelius 6/XML/Musescore conversion. I appreciate the comments!
Thanks! - Tommy

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