Since 1988 we have used Philip's Music Scribe (PMS) for all our music typesetting. Ovation Pro is used for general text layout and editing, while !Draw is used for extra finnicky details like fingering and readjustment of images when needed. All these software programs are based on the RISC OS platform, now using a VirtualAcorn emulator with Microsoft operating systems. This is because we began life in the mid 1980s using BBC and Acorn computers. We did experiment with Sibelius back in the 1990s, but found that we were happier with PMS as it is an open system into which one can insert one's own patches and thus have the ability to create any form of music layout that human ingenuity can supply, from full orchestral scores to aleatory imagery. The one drawback is that it does not have a great range of sounds for playing music scores with a full range of instrumental audio, the playback system being designed mainly to check for errors in typesetting. Since very few nerds now use RISC OS it is rarely possible for other people to share in our editing process. Scores can of course be converted to pdf.
I mess around with the web pages from time to time - a slow process as I have usually forgotten how to do some of the changes and updates in the long intervals since I last visited the files. Derek did a great job setting the thing up originally, but since then I've probably been gradually degrading all his hard work through my own incompetence. Hope you can still make sense of all this.
The web pages were first constructed by Derek Hasted using Adobe Page Mill 2.0e, running on an Apple Macintosh Creative Studio 6500/275.
The catalogue entries are stored in a flat-file database in ClarisWorks 5, which produces catalogue pages by merging HTML layout codes and hypertext links with the catalogue data. The completed catalogue pages are then inserted between the tops and tails which make up the pages you can see with your browser.
The pages are tested on a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer for Mac version 2.1.1, Netscape Navigator version 3.01 for Mac, and for backwards compatibility, on Netscape Navigator for PC version 1.2. The pages are tested at screen resolutions from 640x480 to 1024x768.
We'd advise you to make sure that you have the most recent version of the browser of your choice, especially so you can see the UK pound sign and enjoy the table-based catalogues.
And if you do spot any errors in this WebSite, we would welcome an email to webmaster@cordamusic.co.uk
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Last updated 4th Feb 2022