Command line arguments

Once you have an input file, the Mup program can be run on the file to produce PostScript output for printing music. Mup accepts a number of options. These options start with a dash. (On MS-DOS systems, they may begin with a slash.) The options to the mup command are:

-c N

Combine consecutive measures of all rests or spaces into multirests (multiple measures of rest printed as a single measure with the number of measures of rest printed above the staff). Any time there are N or more measures in a row that consist entirely of rests or spaces, they will be replaced by a multirest. The combining of measures stops when there is a visible staff that contains notes or lyrics, or that contain text or musical symbols after the first beat of the measure, or when there are parameter changes on a visible staff or in score context that changes clef, key, or time signature, or when there is a bar line other than an ordinary bar. This option is most likely to be useful when printing a subset of staffs, where the particular staff(s) you are printing have long periods of rests. See information about the -s option and the "visible" parameter. This option overrides the restcombine parameter.

-C

This option is only used in connection with the -E option. It specifies that comments are to be passed through rather than deleted.

\fB-d\fP \fIN\fP

Print debugging information. N is a bitmap, so you can turn on multiple debugging levels by adding up the flag values. For example, if you want to turn on both level 2 and level 4 tracing, N would be 6 (because 2+4=6).

1

input syntax/grammar analysis tracing

2

high level parse phase tracing

4

low level parse phase tracing

8

reserved

16

high level placement phase tracing

32

low level placement phase tracing

64

reserved

128

contents of the main internal list

256

high level print or MIDI phase tracing

512

low level print or MIDI phase tracing

N can be specified in decimal, octal (by using a leading zero), or hex (by using a leading 0x). This information is intended for debugging of Mup itself and thus is not likely to be of use to the average user. It is possible to compile Mup without the debugging code, in which case the -d debugging option would not be available at all.

-D MACRO[=macro-def]

Define the macro MACRO. The macro name must consist of upper case letters, digits, and underscores, beginning with an upper case letter. The macro_def is optional, and gives the text of the macro. On UNIX systems, if it contains any white space or other special characters, it must be quoted. On other systems, white space may not be allowed. The -D option can be specified multiple times, if you wish to define more than one macro.

-e errfile

Place the error message output into errfile instead of writing it to the standard error output stream.

-E

Rather than produce PostScript or MIDI output, just expand macros and includes, and write the result to the standard output stream. Comments in the input are deleted, unless the -C option is also specified.

-f outfile

Place the PostScript output into outfile instead of writing to the standard output.

-m midifile

Instead of generating PostScript output, generate standard MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) output, and put it in midifile. This option also causes the macro "MIDI" to become defined.

-M

This is like the -m option, except the name of the MIDI file is derived from the name of the Mup input file. If the name of the Mup input file ends with a ".mup" suffix, the generated MIDI file will end with a ".mid" suffix instead. If the name of the Mup input file ends with a ".MUP" suffix, the MIDI file will end with a ".MID" suffix. Otherwise, a ".mid" suffix will be appended to the end of the Mup input file name. If multiple input files are listed, the last is used. If none are specified (input is read from standard input), the name "stdin.mid" will be used for the MIDI file.

-o pagelist

Print only the pages given in pagelist. The pagelist can be a comma-separated list of numbers or ranges, where a range is two numbers separated by a dash. For example, -o1,7-9,12-14 would print pages 1, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, and 14. Alternately, the pagelist can be the special keyword "odd" or "even" which will cause all odd or even numbered pages to be printed. This may be useful if you have a printer that only makes single-sided copies, but you wish to print Mup output double-sided. You could print odd-numbered pages, then turn the paper over and feed the pages through again for the even-numbered pages. Pages will be printed in the order specified, so you can print pages in other than ascending order if you wish, or even print the same page more than once. Printing pages in non-ascending order is most likely to be useful when printing more than one page of music on a single physical page, using the panelsperpage parameter.

-p N

Start numbering pages at \fIN\fP instead of at 1. This can be set inside the Mup input file with the "firstpage" parameter, but the command line option will override the parameter. If -o and -p are used together, the page numbers given in the -opagelist must be the printed page numbers. For example, if you use -p10 and want to print just the second page, you would need to specify -o11.

-r

Print a copy of the Mup shareware registration form to standard output.

-s stafflist

Only print the staffs that are included in stafflist. The stafflist can be a comma-separated list of staff numbers or ranges, such as "1,5" or "1-3,7-8" but no spaces are allowed in the list. If the -m or -M option is also used, to produce MIDI output, this option controls which staffs are played rather than which are printed. If you want only a single voice to be printed or played, you can follow a staff number or range with v1 or v2 or v3 to restrict to voice 1, 2 or 3 respectively, such as "1v2" or "1-4v1,5-6v2". Otherwise all voices on the staff are printed or played. You can't specify a list or range for voices; if you only want to make two out of three voices visible, you have to specify them separately, like "1v2,1v3". See also the "visible" parameter.

-v

Print the Mup version number and exit. This document is for version 4.5.

-x M,N

Extract measures M through N of the song. This allows you to print or play a part of a song. The comma and second value are optional; if not specified, the default is to go to the end of the piece. Positive values specify the number of measures from the beginning of the piece, while negative values are relative to the end, with -1 referring to the last measure of the song. So -x1,-1 means the entire song, if the song doesn't have a pickup measure. If the song has a pickup measure, that is specified by 0. So for a song with a pickup, -x0,-1 would mean the entire song, and -x0,0 would mean just the pickup measure. As other examples, -x-1,-1 means just the final measure of the song, -x2 means starting after the first full measure, -x3,4 means only measures 3 and 4, and -x6,6 means just measure 6. The starting measure is not allowed to be inside an ending. A common use for this option might be to generate a MIDI file for just a few measures. For example, if you were trying to tweak tempo values for a ritard in the last 2 measures of a song, you could use -x-2 to listen to just those measures.

The options, if any, can be followed by one or more files in the format described in the User's Guide. If no files are specified, standard input is read. If several files are listed, they are effectively concatenated together and treated as one big file. Since there are some things (such as header and footer) that are only allowed to occur once, if you have several independent pieces, Mup should be called on each individually rather than trying to print them all with one command. If a specified file does not exist, and its name does not already end with .mup or .MUP, then Mup will append .mup to the specified name and attempt to open that.

If you just want to create a PostScript output file, for printing on a PostScript printer, or viewing with a tool such as GSview, you can use the -f option, as in

    mup -f outfile.ps infile.mup

    mup infile.mup > outfile.ps

For more debugging, in addition to the -d option, if the environment variable MUP_BB is set to "bcfgnsu" or any subset of those letters, the generated output will include "bounding boxes" for the things Mup internally calls bars (b), chords (c), feeds (f), grpsyls (g), notes (n), staffs (s), and stuff (u). While this is intended for use in debugging Mup itself, it may also help you understand why Mup places things the way it does, since in general, Mup only allows bounding boxes to overlap according to specific rules. If viewed with a color PostScript viewer (not mupdisp, which is covered below), these boxes will be in color.

Mup User's Guide Table of Contents