IMSLP:File formats
Free public domain sheet music from IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library
On this page you can find some information on the file formats used in IMSLP. If you want to download the PDF file of the score you're currently looking for, you clicked the wrong link. Please go back and click on the score description to retrieve the PDF.
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Portable Document Format (PDF) is the main type of document used here on IMSLP for music scores. To view PDF files, download one of the recommended clients:
- Foxit PDF Reader - A free PDF reader. This is the recommended PDF reader for IMSLP; the official Adobe PDF reader is considerably slower.
- PDF Creator - Printer driver that lets you print to PDF (Windows only).
- PDF Split and Merge - A graphic Java program which allows you to merge/split PDF files. More information on this program can be found here. Recommended for PDF manipulation.
- PDFtk - A commandline program which allows you to merge/split PDF files, among a list of other things.
For Ubuntu users who browse the web with Firefox, click here to install Mozplugger. Mozplugger embeds the Evince PDF Reader (among other things) inside Firefox. Evince is installed by default, but you can make sure by clicking here.
For Mac (OS X) users, creating PDF files is possible without additional software. A tutorial can be found here.
Related Pages
DjVu
This file format has been deprecated. Please use a PDF file instead.
DJVU is a file format very similar to PDF, and is conceived as a replacement for PDF. DJVU is especially designed for scanned documents, so the document legibility is higher than PDF at the same file size. Detailed information can be found here.
Some applications that can view/create DJVU files:
- WinDJView - The best free DJVU viewer out there (it's open source too). Its interface is almost exactly like Acrobat Reader, except it is much faster.
- MacDJView - Basically WinDJView for macs.
- DjVu Solo 3.1 - An older version of LizardTech's Document Express, but is free and can convert scanned images into DjVu (you can also directly scan into DjVu format). Fairly user-friendly. This is the recommended software to use for people who want to submit scores to IMSLP in DJVU format. DjVu Solo is not available for download on LizardTech's site, but you can get a copy from PlanetDjVu or the local IMSLP server. Note that this software is not recommended for viewing DJVU files because some of the DJVU files on IMSLP might be in more recent DJVU file format versions (use WinDJView/MacDJView instead).
MUS
File formats used by Finale and Score. The code is not interchangeable between the two programmes.
Finale MUS files can be read and printed using the free Finale Reader.
SIB
File format used by Sibelius. SIB files can be read/printed after installing the free Scorch plugin.
ZIP
This file format has been deprecated. Please use a PDF file with bookmarks instead.
ZIP files are compressed archives which -most of the time- contain more than one file (i.e. ZIP files aren't music files, but archive files which contain music files such as PDF, DJVU, MUS or SIB)
To extract files from a ZIP file, you can use one of the following applications:
7-Zip - 7-Ζip is an OpenSource application with which you can extract and create ZIP files, as well as other archived formats (such as RAR and TAR). There is a version for both Windows and Linux.
ZipIt - ZipIt is an application for Macintosh with which you can extract/create ZIP files.
The only files that are allowed inside ZIP archives are the files mentioned before, i.e. PDF, DJVU, MUS and/or SIB, or even ZIP files (if there is a reason).
Note, also, that in the latest version of most known operating systems (Windows, Linux, Macintosh) there are pre-installed applications with which you can open ZIP files (Windows XP and up have WinZip installed, in Linux there is Ark and 7-Zip etc).
