Re: Notations in Scope

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> To be clear, are we talking about switching to SVG as the next radical rev
> of MusicXML (which wouldn’t be XML anymore), or just talking about
> organizational methods that can be applied to XML as well as SVG?
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In my view (and I am aligned with the other co-chairs on this point): No,
we are definitely *not* talking about switching to SVG as an overall
framework for describing music -- particularly not for describing CWMN, or
mensural notation, or neumes, or other notational languages with a
well-defined symbolic vocabulary that transcends any particular visual
representation. I have described the reasons why I think this is unworkable
for software developers in the majority of cases, and won't repeat them
again here. Let me just say that for CWMN scores, such a decision would
make little more sense than using SVG as the main architecture for plain
text.

This does not mean that SVG has no role to play, though. For notational
schemes that cannot be encoded without reference to the literal, visual
contents of a score, SVG is potentially a good way to encode such scores
and annotate it with musical information. (I personally do not favor
directly including MIDI in the way that James Ingram describes.)

A yes/no decision on SVG is not required right now. There is room to
accommodate this type of approach going forward. At the Frankfurt meeting I
spoke of Encoding Profiles (
https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/wiki/Music_Notation_Use_Cases#Document_Profiles).
We can imagine a possible Encoding Profile which might state that the
musical content of a score is provided as SVG rather than MusicXML-Next,
with annotations similar in spirit to those proposed by James. This Profile
would be used by works which want to forego the strictures of CWMN, etc.
and are willing to give up the ability to be interpreted by most notation
software, other than that specifically designed for this profile. You might
think of the resulting profile as an optional "graphical score module"
within the overall framework, whose apparoach is distinct from CWMN
encodings. Both profiles might well share many features like segmentation
into movements, bibliographic metadata, etc.

I believe the work required to fully spec out a graphics-centric approach
to notation is considerable, and requires much more than James's proposal
so far. I don't think the CG should stop in its tracks while solving all
these problems. I would suggest that members of the CG who are passionate
about these cases develop their ideas more or less independently for a
while and then we look at how we might fold the results into the overall
spec.

Best,
...Joe