A Pen-Based Musical Score Editor

We present in this paper a pen-based musical score editor prototype. It allows the user to edit quite the same way as if it was on a sheet of paper, all of his drawing strokes being progressively recognized and replaced by their corresponding symbol by the system, right during the editing. Most of the classical musical symbols are already available, as well as the basic editing possibilities. We propose a new way to recognize the musical symbols thanks to the knowledge of musical structure, graphically represented by boxes. Finding the structural box in which a stroke is drawn reduces the possible symbols. It helps minimizing ambiguities and increases recognition rates. First tests among musicians are satisfactory and encouraging.