XRNS-PHP

PHP Scripts for Renoise

Last update: 17 March 2008
Latest releases: XRNS-SF 1.06 is the XRNS Script Frontend. Windows users who want an easy GUI and ready to use PHP 5.2 scripting environment with all the required third party utilities are encouraged to download this package. XRNS-SCRIPTS 1.06 is for users of OS X, Linux, and any other PHP 5.2 compatible operating system with a command prompt.

Summary

The XRNS-PHP project is a collection of tools for Renoise. The XRNS Script Frontend provides a graphical interface for the PHP scripts.

XRNS Script Frontend running the Clip2Code script

The XRNS Script Frontend provides a graphical interface for XRNS-PHP scripts on Windows

Introduction

Renoise is a contemporary software application based on the heritage and development of tracker styled music sequencers. Its primary use is the composition of music using samples (WAV, AIFF, FLAC, OGG, MP3) and MIDI sequencing of VSTi soft synths.

The mixer panel in Renoise adds a modern touch to the tracker heritage

Renoise currently runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

The XRNS-PHP project is a collection of tools for Renoise XRNS song modules, XRNI instruments, and clipboard data copied from within Renoise's window. The purpose of these tools is to offer functionality beyond that of Renoise itself. The tools can plugged into XRNS Script Frontend, which provides a graphical interface.

The XRNS-PHP SourceForge project site is mainly intended for organized development of the tools. As a user, you may find the latest versions of the tools here.

Currently, we have created the following tools:

xrns-sf: XRNS Script Frontend, a graphical interface to any PHP script (for Windows)
clip2code: converts pattern data to simple text
xrns_merge: merges 2 XRNS modules
xrns_ogg: compresses XRNS and XRNI with OGG VORBIS
xrns_randomizer: randomizes XRNS modules
xrns2midi: translates an XRNS module to MIDI format
xml2mid: converts a MidiXML file to MIDI format
xrns_searchandreplace: Replaces every occurance of specific note in the song to another one
xrns_microtuner: Tune XRNI instruments using standard Scala tuning (*.tun) files
xrns_delete_unused_tracks: Deletes tracks if there are no notes or commands
SampleToSplit: Auto-magically maps xrni samples to the keys they belong to

Where to go now?

Downloads are available on the XRNS-PHP SourceForge project site. Or you can grab the latest revisions from the CVS Repository (basically work in progress, but usually tested) if you are impatient or adventurous. Most tools can also be found on Renoise's own website.

How to contribute

You can help the XRNS-PHP project become a healthy fluffy teddybear in ways including but not limited to:

Testing the scripts and reporting any bugs
Brainstorming and developing a new Renoise tool in PHP.
Filling any of the positions at our Project Help Job List, in particular porting XRNS-SF to Mac OS X
Adding new or completing existing Feature Requests
Giving us your feedback on the XRNS Development section on the Renoise forum, which is a bit cozier than SourceForge.
Donating to us, the project developers. We programmers are people too. Yeah way.

Technical background

Renoise outputs its data in XML format in several situations.

The actual notes and effects are stored in an XML song file, wrapped in a zip archive, which is called an XRNS module
Renoise's propriety XRNI instrument format uses XML to describe the instrument's properties
Data from within Renoise such as notes and envelopes can be copied to the clipboard. Pasted in a text editor, you will see the XML representation of the data.

The XML data can be easily accessed, allowing anyone to manipulate the song without too much effort (eg. you don't have to reverse engineer the format). Our weapon of choice to manipulate the XML data is PHP. PHP scripts are commonly used as server-sided scripts, but it is also possible to run them from the command-line.

We have chosen to write scripts in PHP because of its ease, portability and popularity. It is not hard language, within a few weeks you should already be able to write fairly impressive stuff. We hope to motivate interested souls into picking up PHP and write new scripts for Renoise.

Few people appreciated having to installing a complete web server in order to use our tools. Also, the command-line method was not very popular with Windows users. To circumvent those problems, a frontend was developed that can be fed any php command-line script and displays it in an easy and pretty graphical interface.

Third party

These scripts depend on the following third party open-source utilities:

If you intend to run these scripts at the command prompt without the XRNS Script Frontend package, ensure you have the aformentioned binaries in your path.

No warranty

This software is provided "as is," without warranty of any kind, express or implied. In no event shall the XRNS-PHP project or its contributors be held liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages arising out of the use of or inability to use this software.