🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec25.235230.27663@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>, fermat@fermat.dartmouth.edu (Michael Glenn) writes:
> 
> What is the purpose of the .playscore format?  I had figured this would be  
> because of the "size", but look:
> 
> -rw-rw-r--  1 fermat     43777 Dec 25 18:44 Invention-12.playscore
> -rw-rw-r--  1 fermat      4669 Dec 25 18:43 Invention-12.playscore.Z
> -rw-rw-r--  1 fermat     61222 Dec 25 18:43 Invention-12.score
> -rw-rw-r--  1 fermat      7243 Dec 25 18:42 Invention-12.score.Z
> 
> Sure, it is smaller than the .score file, but look at how nice a job  
> "compress" does with it?  (lha and zip do an even better job)  The  
> compressed .score file is much much smaller than the .playscore file.  The  
> time it takes playscore to read in either the .score or .playscore files  
> seems very nearly the same.  So I can't believe it is to speed things up.
> 
> Anyone know?  Why not just compress them, and pipe through zcat when you  
> want to read it?
> 
> Michael
> fermat@fermat.dartmouth.edu (NeXTMail ok)

The playscore format is a "pre-digested" version of a score file.  Since it is
a lower-level description of the music, it can be plated more reliably,
temporally speaking.  It is mainly useful when the score is complicated and the
DSP might not be able to process it in real time.

See the man pages for playscore for more info on such things.

_andy
adunn@fnal.fnal.gov