Load/Save Humdrum data | VHV documentation

Humdrum data can be loaded or saved in multiple ways.

Drag-and-drop Humdrum files into VHV

The VHV interface can load Humdrum files by dragging and dropping a file icon from the operating system onto the VHV page:

Humdrum file import example — Humdrum file loaded by drag-and-drop into VHVV.

Try downloading the same Humdrum file used in the figure above, and load it into VHV in a similar manner (usually save in a web browser by right-clicking on the link and then choose save link as).

Copy-and-paste Humdrum data

Humdrum data can also be pasted directly into the VHV text editor:

Humdrum file copy/paste example — Copy-and-pasting Humdrum data into VHVV text editor.

Copy-and-paste with the terminal

Copying from the VHV text editor and pasting to another editor in the operating system is possible, either with ctrl-c/ctrl-v in Windows, or command-c/command-v in MacOS (or you can figure out on your own how to copy/paste in linux/unix). Also note that ctrl-a or ctrl-a can be used to select all of the VHV text editor content before copying.

The following sections discuss how to copy/paste between standard input and standard output in the terminal and the VHV editor.

MacOS using pbcopy/pbpaste

When working with a terminal in MacOS, you can use the pbcopy command to copy standard output to the clipboard (or PasteBoard if you want to remember the command name). If the Humdrum file is called file.krn, the copy command is:

cat file.krn | pbcopy

Then go to the VHV text editor and type command-v to paste into VHV.

Humdrum file copy/paste from the terminal — Copy-and-pasting Humdrum from the terminal using pbcopy.

Conversely, pbpaste can be used to copy data from the VHV editor and paste as standard input into the terminal. The following figure demonstrates this by copying data from the VHV text editor to the census command:

Humdrum file copy/paste to the terminal — Copy-and-pasting Humdrum to the terminal using pbpaste.

The command demonstrated above is:

pbpaste | census -k

where data from the VHV editor is piped into the census command, resulting in this information for the first movement of Beethoven’s op. 81a piano sonata:

HUMDRUM DATA

Number of data tokens:     7034
Number of null tokens:     3329
Number of multiple-stops:  679
Number of data records:    2129
Number of comments:        12
Number of interpretations: 115
Number of records:         2256

KERN DATA

Number of note-heads:      3944
Number of notes:           3917
Longest note:              2.
Shortest note:             24
Highest note:              ffff
Lowest note:               FFF
Number of rests:           268
Maximum number of voices:  9
Number of single barlines: 197
Number of double barlines: 1

Saving Humdrum files/data

Humdrum data can be copied from the VHV text editor and then pasted into another editor within the operating system.

An alternate method is to save the contents of the VHV text editor via the web browser with the alt-s command. This will save the contents of the editor to wherever files are saved from your browser. Note that the contents of the text editor need not contain Humdrum data, which is why the default save filename is data.txt rather than data.krn.

Note: If a file already exists in the target directory/folder with the same name, the browser will usually add an incremental extension to the filename, such as “data (1).txt”, “data (2).txt”, and so on.

Although the default filename for saving with alt-s is data.txt, you can save to a different filename by adding the text !!!!SEGMENT: myfile.krn before the first line in the Humdrum file content in the VHV text editor. For repertory files loaded from kernScores, the original filename of the source data will be used.

The saved file will be in UTF-8 format. If there are no high-bit characters in the file, then this is equivalent to a plain ASCII text file. Technologically challenged people should probably use the alt-s method of saving rather than copy-and-pasting into a text editor, since you should make sure that the copied text is saved in an ASCII file rather than a file containing formatting commands such as an RTF or MS Word file.

Try saving a file in this manner and then reloading it into the VHV text editor either by the drag-and-drop method or the copy-and-paste methods described above. Here is a demonstration of saving two files (Bach chorales 61 and 62), and then dragging them back into the VHV editor from the Download folder.