Re: Getting Off The Ground

Hello Music Notation Group,

Here are some thoughts.

1. Short-term / long-term
 It might be better to plan long-term first so that short-term things are  
working in a long-term direction.

2. Improvements to MusicXML standard.
 There is a lot of work required to turn the current standard into  
something robust enough not to need the sample files which are necessary  
currently. Also it would be a good idea to take the opportunity to  
deprecate or remove some of the redundant parts that are never used, and  
perhaps add some improvements. I am wholeheartedly in favour of providing  
semantic tags to text also. If these are provided then  engravers will  
learn to use them, much as people learn how to use formatting commands in  
word processors.
 
3. SMuFL
 I'm not clear why the MusicXML standard needs to be coupled to a font  
mapping standard. Wouldn't it be simpler for each standard to stand alone?

4. MEI
 MEI seems very well specified (but with 732 pages it's difficult to get a  
quick overview!). If we were all starting from scratch this might be the  
better way to go, but MusicXML does have a lot of momentum. To persuade  
all music software developers to abandon MusicXML and commit to new MEI  
development might be a step too far. Could we take good ideas from MEI and  
use them in MusicXML?

6. Backup/forward
 Examine ways to remove backup and forward?

James Sutton
Dolphin Computing
http://www.dolphin-com.co.uk
http://www.seescore.co.uk