Notation Interchange File Format

Description
Notation Interchange File Format (NIFF) is a binary file format for storage and transfer of musical notation, based on RIFF or RIFX. It was designed as part of a collaborative effort by a number of music software companies with the aim of creating a universal file format for musical notation.

While the NIFF format is still supported by a number of software packages, official development of the format has ceased and it is generally considered to be obsolete.

There are / were two separate proposals for an XML-based NIFF format - NIFF XML and NIFFML

Information

 * NIFF 6a.3 format specification (1998-10-15)
 * NIFF 6b format specification (2002-06-11)
 * NIFF XML Proposal, including schema and sample file
 * NIFFML - the XML representation of NIFF

Software

 * NIFFTY - a Java applet for displaying NIFF files on the web
 * NIFF to text converter - includes source code in C

Sample files

 * music-notation.info: NIFF → MS_NIFF.zip

Links

 * NIFF on music-notation.info. Includes sample files, SDK downloads, file format specifications and links to programs supporting the format
 * Discussion of the NIFF format on the Rosegarden mailing list