Re: Music Notation on the Web - Last Call?

Hi Roger,

I think your analogy to RDF is mistaken. MusicXML was designed to solve the
practical problem of sheet music interchange betwen music notation programs
and has succeeded incredibly well there. It is pervasive within music
preparation and publishing whenever people have to share music between
applications, whether for print, TV, film, or online services. It is a first
choice solution for this problem, hardly a last resort. You probably don't
see this because these are B2B problems, not B2C.

You're of course correct that something needs to be done to make digital
sheet music work better for musicians than the paper substitutes we have
now. We're working on it, but those are likely to be solutions that layer on
top of MusicXML in some fashion, not replacing it.

Right now, the best way for W3C to contribute is to focus on the audio and
graphic APIs and implementations for HTML5, making sure they work well for
the notation use case. We seem to be well on this path with the work of the
audio XG and the proposed audio WG charter.

Best regards,

Michael Good
Recordare LLC
www.recordare.com