[JW Lua] Enigma File Dump Plugin

Robert Patterson robert at robertgpatterson.com
Sun Jul 5 02:54:26 CEST 2020


Hello JW Lua people. I recently became aware of this list and joined. The
global pandemic has given me time (finally) to look into JW Lua and its
capabilities, and I must say I am very impressed. Jari has created a
powerful toolset.

Many of you will know that I, along with Jari and Tobias Giesen are the
three approved 3rd-party users of the Finale PDK. Back when we started,
FInale could export files as text in an "Enigma Transportable File" format.
This proved to be an invaluable tool for discovering how to use the PDK.
When Makemusic abandoned ETFs in ~2006, I knew I had to have something to
replace them. So I created a plugin that tries every possible "extag" (a
kind of data accessor for Enigma) and dumps all it finds into a file
similar to the etf format. It has proved invaluable to me for making sure
my code is doing everything it should.

The basic use case is, use the plugin to dump a test file, make a change in
Finale, dump a 2nd copy of the file, and then use a text-file comparison
utility to see what changed. This tells you what your code needs to do.

Realizing that lua programming is one step removed from the Enigma data
structures, this new version of the plugin adds a mapping between PDK
Framework classes and the extags. Each new extag is labeled with its
corresponding PDK Framework class, provided it has one. (Otherwise it shows
as "FCUnknown". There are a *lot* of "FCUnknown".)

I don't know whether you will find it useful, but I certainly have. The
plugin is free to use. I haven't gone through the full signing process with
Apple, so Catalina users may have to force it in the same way one does with
JW Lua itself.

Glad to be here. Happy lua-ing.

Enigma File Dump Plugin
<https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-5Fybo5N-qzQDOEUvcmXGUOJkQpOwfMI?usp=sharing>
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