Languages and scripts in MusicXML and MEI scores¶
Keep a song title or lyrics in their original writing system when you import MusicXML or MEI. For the scripts listed below, Viewer supplies the fonts, so you do not need to install them on each tablet. This also applies to text labels placed as annotations over the score.
For a first check, import one song and inspect a line of its lyrics and its title. If the import reports characters outside the app’s fonts, use the section below to understand the result before sharing the score. See importing score files for the import route.
A score written only in these characters breaks into systems and pages identically on iPad and Android when the source, display candidate, and layout rules are the same, because nothing falls back to a device font. Compare the same part and page settings before relying on shared page numbers; the text coverage is one condition, not a guarantee of the score editor's original appearance or of matching pages for different score preparations. See Choose PDF, MusicXML, or MEI for the differences.
Supported scripts and languages¶
| Script | Languages |
|---|---|
| Japanese (kanji, hiragana, katakana) | Japanese 日本語 |
| Latin | English, German Deutsch, French Français, Italian Italiano, Spanish Español, Portuguese Português, Dutch Nederlands, Danish Dansk, Swedish Svenska, Norwegian Norsk, Finnish Suomi, Icelandic Íslenska, Polish Polski, Czech Čeština, Slovak Slovenčina, Hungarian Magyar, Romanian Română, Croatian Hrvatski, Slovene Slovenščina, Estonian Eesti, Latvian Latviešu, Lithuanian Lietuvių, Turkish Türkçe, Vietnamese Tiếng Việt, Indonesian Bahasa Indonesia, Malay Bahasa Melayu, Tagalog, Swahili Kiswahili, Welsh Cymraeg, Irish Gaeilge, Catalan Català, Basque Euskara, Esperanto |
| Greek | Greek Ελληνικά |
| Cyrillic | Russian Русский, Ukrainian Українська, Belarusian Беларуская, Bulgarian Български, Serbian Српски, Macedonian Македонски, Mongolian Монгол, Kazakh Қазақша, Kyrgyz Кыргызча, Tajik Тоҷикӣ |
| Hangul | Korean 한국어 |
| Han (simplified and traditional) | Chinese 中文 |
| Thai | Thai ไทย |
| Devanagari | Hindi हिन्दी, Marathi मराठी, Nepali नेपाली, Sanskrit संस्कृतम् |
| Hebrew | Hebrew עברית, Yiddish ייִדיש |
| Arabic | Arabic العربية, Persian فارسی, Urdu اردو |
| Armenian | Armenian Հայերեն |
| Bengali | Bengali বাংলা, Assamese অসমীয়া |
| Ethiopic | Amharic አማርኛ, Tigrinya ትግርኛ |
| Georgian | Georgian ქართული |
| Gujarati | Gujarati ગુજરાતી |
| Gurmukhi | Punjabi ਪੰਜਾਬੀ |
| Kannada | Kannada ಕನ್ನಡ |
| Khmer | Khmer ភាសាខ្មែរ |
| Lao | Lao ພາສາລາວ |
| Malayalam | Malayalam മലയാളം |
| Odia | Odia ଓଡ଼ିଆ |
| Sinhala | Sinhala සිංහල |
| Tamil | Tamil தமிழ் |
| Telugu | Telugu తెలుగు |
| Tibetan | Tibetan བོད་སྐད, Dzongkha རྫོང་ཁ |
| Myanmar | Burmese မြန်မာ |
| Emoji | — |
The languages named above are a sample of those written in each script. A language written in one of these scripts displays the same way whether or not it is named here.
Latin keeps accented spellings such as Dvořák, Bartók, Saint-Saëns, and Łódź exactly as written.
When a score uses something outside this list¶
For characters the bundled fonts do not carry, score text uses a device font. Faces can mix within a line and character widths can change, so system and page breaks may differ between iPad and Android. PagePilot Viewer says so right after the import: some characters are not in the app's fonts and are shown with the device's fonts.
In a text label, a character outside the bundled faces becomes ?. If lyrics or a title look like ?, you are looking at an annotation placed over the score rather than the score itself.
Scripts not bundled yet include Cherokee, Mongolian, Syriac, N'Ko, Thaana, Tifinagh, Javanese, Balinese, and Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics.
If the writing system you need is missing, contact us with the language and an example of the affected text. This helps identify which fonts to consider; it does not establish a delivery date.
Other page formats¶
This list covers MusicXML and MEI scores and text labels. ChordPro text pages are drawn in the monospaced PlemolJP HS and cover a different range. Fumen, plain text, and Markdown pages use the fonts on your device.
A score imported by an older version keeps the fonts it had. Score pages are fixed at import, so adding a script later does not rebuild them. Choose Add independently for the same source file, or Update score from the score menu, to redraw it with the current fonts. Reusing an existing score keeps its previous pages. Review the update for each song that will use it.
Before the band uses the same piece¶
Check a title, a lyric line, and any annotation labels on the actual devices. If one uses fallback fonts, confirm the visible page boundaries rather than assuming they match. The list covers 25 bundled font faces; it concerns text display, not translation of lyrics or compatibility with every MusicXML or MEI notation.
For automatic turns, prepare each part’s timings independently; Sync Together shares song position rather than page numbers. For a file that fails to import or notation that looks different, see MusicXML and MEI display limits.