NW2NWC Software
for creating NoteWorthy Composer files in NWC format from those in NW format
Version 2, March 2017

Introduction and Summary

This software reads files of type .NW and creates equivalent files (as far as is possible) of type NWC with the same name but .NWC replacing .NW. The files processed by one press of the "Go" button are all those in the selected source directory and its sub-directories. Existing files of the same name are not over-written. The output files are fully accepted by current Noteworthy products, such as version 2.75 (2015) and the free Noteworthy Composer 2 viewer, v2.1 (2010) at https://noteworthycomposer.com/nwc2/viewer.htm. Both the trial version of 2.75 and the viewer are free products and allow printing of the generated files.

The main value of this software is to recover, view, edit and print files from a format that is no longer supported because the original Noteworthy software does not run on modern computer platforms. Unfortunately, current Noteworthy products have different expressive power compared with the earlier ones which produced .NW files. This affects particularly upper and lower parts written on a stave, and chords. Further detail is given below, but it means that some compromises have been inevitable. Thus, the new files are not always completely faithful representations of the old, and may not be directly acceptable for use without further minor editing. However, a log file is generated which contains an indication of most changes and issues.

If you still have a copy of an old version of Noteworthy, such as Noteworthy 2, then you will be able to view the NW files on a modern Windows platform by using DOSBox from https://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox/. In order to avoid the difficulty of long file names for directories (such as "My Documents"), I recommend copying the complete Noteworthy directory and your .NW files to the root directory of a USB stick, and working with the DOSBox from there. If the USB stick is drive "E:" and the old Noteworthy software is in a top directory called "NW", then at the DOS prompt "Z:\>" type "Mount E E:\", then "E:". and then "cd NW". Alt-CR will change the DOS box to full screen. Assuming the executable is NW2.exe, typing "NW2" will start Noteworthy. On closing Noteworthy, typing "exit" at the DOS command prompt "E:\" will close DOSBox. 

The main difficulty in translating NW files to NWC files is that NW files only contain details of the visual representation of the music whereas NWC files contain mostly only semantic information. An example of this is in the titles of NW files. These are stored as individual words with their position on the page, but it is not straightforward to determine whether the words form part of a title for the NWC file, or something else such as a page header or composer's name. 

You are welcome to email me at ChangeThis@tiscali.co.uk where you need to change ChangeThis to Junk13. Please attach any NW files which are not being processed correctly, if possible with pdfs of what they should look like. I will endeavour to fix any issues. Please use the subject heading "Noteworthy Composer" so that I don't treat it as junk mail. As you will have guessed, this email address is one I give out to companies that might spam me, and I'm hoping spambots won't recognise and reconstruct the above as my email address!

Installation

Installation is trivial. Just extract the executable (.exe) file from the zip file and place it in any suitable folder of your Windows machine. Right-click on it if you wish to create a desktop shortcut. You also need to copy the file ReadMe.rtf to the same directory if you want access to this file via the help button. You may need to download some additional DLL files, including ones with extension DCL (originally from Borland). Most or all of these are included in the ZIP file. However, there are known security issues with some versions of these DLL files and you may prefer to download them from reputable sources and then delete them when you have finished using this software. Alternative copies should be easy to find on the internet, and your system will prompt you with the names of any such files it still requires when you run the program. 

Your machine should warn you not to trust this software because it does open files and create new ones on your machine (only .NW, .NWC and .log files and a configuration file) but it does not connect to the internet. 

The source code for this software, which is written in Delphi, is primarily the .pas file downloaded with the executable in the zip file from my website at www.colinandmargaret.co.uk. This is included with all the other necessary files so that users can, if they wish, check the software for any security issues and re-compile it to obtain trustworthy code. It may also enable people to update the software to include missing features or to recompile it to work on their machine. The code can be compiled into an executable for use on a Windows 10 platform using Embarcadero Delphi 10.1, Berlin Version, of which there is a free version available from www.embarcadero.com. I used an older compiler by Borland which gives an executable that also works on previous Windows platforms. You are welcome to use and adapt the code in any way you wish for non-commercial purposes. 

Issues

This is the list of known issues and problems. Apart from possibly improving feedback, these are unlikely to be mitigated in future versions (if any) of the software because most are insoluble until Noteworthy Composer re-incorporates some missing features. 

i) Because NW files contain a visual rather than a semantic representation of the music, NW files can contain a number of different errors. For example, Noteworthy's Sample1.NW contains incorrect stemsas shown in bar 14 of the generated NWC file, and Sample2.NW contains an empty bar with no rests as well as undotted notes where the dot is written in as text. Also, a chord could contain both a crotchet and a quaver, but would just look like two quavers. Although there is some checking to iron out a few of the most obvious of such problems, some are bound to escape. A typical consequence is that barlines become out of alignment in systems with more than one stave. One typical occasional error is caused by having deleted or pasted in part of a set of notes which were grouped by a beam, tie or slur. Noteworthy retained the part beam, tie or slur. Although this is not a problem in the reconstructed NWC file, it does generated a warning in the log file. 

ii) Accurate recreation of chords depends on a good alignment of the notes in the NW file. This is not always the case. Sometimes notes which do not belong to the same chord may be combined into one chord, and sometimes member notes in a chord may be separated from the chord. These errors are rare, and occur mainly in NW files where notes are very tightly spaced. 

iii) Any number of notes and rests of any duration and any head were possible in chords of NW files, enabling two (or more) overlapping parts to be written on one stave. This is nowhere near possible in NWC files where no overlap of parts is possible, upper and lower parts must have notes of uniform length and identical heads, at most one rest is possible, and that rest must be at most equal in duration to the shortest note. 
To provide code acceptable to viewers and editors, excess rests or rests that are too long have been replaced with grace notes of the same duration and position. Furthermore, some stem directions may have been changed to avoid upper and lower parts of a chord overlapping, and note durations shortened if necessary to achieve uniformity of note length in a part. These modifications are necessary to prevent current NWC viewers and editors from crashing, and the changes are noted in the log file. 

iv) Where grace notes and normal notes appear in the same chord the type of note has been retained. However, the chord may not be rendered entirely correctly on screen, and playback may be affected if the chord is interpreted as being all grace notes. Note, in particular, that the stems and spacing suffer when grace and full notes are mixed in a chord. 

v) "Ghost" notes (used in unpitched percussion) don't exist in the latest Noteworthy products, and nor do notes with various embellishments on their stems. They are all reproduced as grace notes.

vi) Beams are poorly reproduced by NWC editors and viewers when chords are involved. They are only possible between notes with stems in one direction. If both upper and lower parts on a stave should have beams at a given point, only one appears despite the generated NWC file containing commands for both. 

vii) Slurs could be drawn carefully around notes in NW files, but no control is possible over their shape in NWC files.

viii) Formatting systems on a page was performed in the older NW format, but is not possible with NWC file format. Hence staves from successive systems have to be joined together into a single system. If systems in the NW file have different numbers of staves, then this process may connect the wrong staves. Unfortunately, there is no semantic information in the NW file to enable this joining to be carried out correctly. Noteworthy's Sample1.NW is a case in point, where the top (vocal) line does not start until several systems in. 
In all cases, each system in the NW file is expanded vertically as necessary with extra blank staves added at the bottom before connecting it to the NWC system. So different parts may then have to be moved downwards as necessary onto different staves in order to line them up with previous notes for those parts. Bar lines and rests are inserted in these added staves to align the parts properly vertically.

ix) Recovering text is generally problematic although most of it is reproduced correctly and almost in the right place in the NWC file. NW stored a line of text as separate words with no information to connect them. In most cases the position of the words has enabled them to be re-connected. However, for lyrics the spacing is often too wide for this to be possible and the lyrics then remain as separated words or phrases. 

x) As a result of the lack of semantic information in the NW file, text is not identified there as being title, author, copyright, dynamics or lyric information. The exception is header and footer text for which there is no equivalent in NWC format. Headers and footers are placed in the File/Info box, and usually the title, dynamics and some Italian phrases are correctly determined, but not other textual features. Although they will appear on the score when the NWC file is viewed, items such as the composer and copyright information and lyrics should ideally be moved by hand into the appropriate File/Info and Edit/Lyrics boxes of your Noteworthy editor. 

xi) Text cannot be positioned as accurately either vertically or horizontally in NWC files as was the case in NW files. This may cause different text items to overlap or related ones to become separated.

xii) NW only allowed up to five fonts and there was no choice over their typeface or size. The choice of fonts for the NWC files here is much better, but does not quite match those used before. Consequently, words or phrases may overlap or become separated when the NWC file is viewed. 

xiii) NW files contain almost nothing by way of page setup detail, staff properties or acoustic (playback) information. Default values have therefore been used for these in the NWC files. 

xiv) Apart from directions given by repeat bars and standard phrases such as "D.C. al Coda", special endings, such as for first and second times, required text in NW files. It has not been possible to recognise these as such, and so they will need to be edited by hand under the editor's menu item Insert/Special Ending... to achieve the desired result when playback is engaged. Similarly, the number of repetitions associated with a repeat barline needs to be inserted. In the same vein, metronome speeds required text in NW files but this needs to be transcribed using the Insert/Tempo menu item in order to have the right speed on playback.

xv) Many musical symbols could be included in NW text (or on the satve), but this is entirely impossible in NWC text. Amongst the losses are the breve, mordents, alternative segni, and the possibility of adding chord information containing flats or sharps. In all cases, an error message is put in the log file, and text for the symbol placed in the NWC file where the symbol should have appeared. 

xvi) It was possible to draw straight lines in NW, thereby enabling hairpins for crescendi and diminuendi to be created. The meaning of individual lines is difficult to determine since their use can be much more widespread, and so they have been entirely deleted, with only a comment remaining in the log file.  

xvii) I don't have copies of all NW formats and so there may be some NW files which this program does not translate. There should be an error message for such files. 

xviii) I've only tested this software on a few hundred NW files on Windows XP and Windows 10 machines, so I give no guarantees that it will work on other platforms or for all NW files. However, I've tried to test it for all the features that NW files could contain. 

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