Notation Interchange File Format

Revision as of 17:16, 27 January 2015

Description

Notation Interchange File Format (NIFF) is a binary file format for storage and transfer of musical notation, based on the Resource Interchange File Format. 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

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