Re: MNX proposal §1.2

Michael's point is a good one.  However, my main concern with MNX, based on
the discussion thread and proposal, is that it is trying to do too much.  I
think one of the problems with MusicXML was that it tried to accommodate
too many use cases and in so doing became unwieldy to the point that no one
could properly implement all of it's features.  I could be wrong, but I
don't think there is any application that has ever been created that can
use all of MusicXML's features, and this seems to me to be a flaw in the
specification.

MNX, with it's introduction of SVG, embedded files, files on the side, CSS,
etc, appears to be quickly racing off of the edge of the same cliff and I
wonder how many applications will jump on board.  It feels a little bit
like Joe is describing how his application's backend will work instead of
describing a music notation data exchange format.

I wonder if Finale, Sibelius, MuseScore, Lilypond and Komp (us), are going
to stick with MusicXML or else need to come up with something better suited
to exchanging notation data between them.

Sorry to be a skeptic, but I might as well signal that I will be playing
that role at Messe.  I'm looking forward to meeting all of you nonetheless.

Thanks!
Matt




.mjb


On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 11:12 AM, Michael Good <mgood@makemusic.com> wrote:

> Hi James,
>
> You are leaving out the main dish: it is semantic, and not spatial or
> temporal.
>
> I don't see how a computer file could include the main dish. The semantics
> are located in the readers' minds, and computers have no access to minds.
> Nobody really knowns how and why brains interpret the world in terms of
> space and time. Performance practice traditions are an exclusively *human*
> undertaking, and are what real music making is all about.
>
>
> I don’t think what you’ve written has been accurate since at least the
> 1950s if not earlier. Today computers and humans perform music together all
> the time. Computers have been representing musical semantics for a long
> time. There are hundreds of existing music applications that use MusicXML
> today to represent musical semantics in a way that can be shared with other
> applications. That includes applications that listen to human performers
> and communicate with them in semantic terms.
>
> If you look at the list at http://www.musicxml.com/software/ you will see
> a wide range of applications that are used for composing, performing,
> teaching, studying, preparing, analyzing, and finding music. The vast
> majority of these rely on a semantic representation of music. Many of the
> people behind those applications are members of this community group.
>
> I think we need to understand and value the work of the different members
> of this group in order to have productive conversations. If we all think
> only of the needs of our particular application and not at all of the needs
> of other applications, it will be difficult to make any progress.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Michael Good
> VP of MusicXML Technologies
> MakeMusic, Inc.
>
>
>
>