Re: Pömmelchen

Thanks for clarifying, Andrew. Good points all. There absolutely are
multiple standards out there and they all have strengths and weaknesses.

On the subject of compromise, we're on the same page. I would say we are
aiming for a different tradeoff than MEI (which makes both standards
valuable, each in its own way). MNX definitely favors interoperability. To
that end, we will indeed have to sacrifice some aspects of semantic
representation in a work like Pommelchen to achieve it, which is a point I
can't emphasize enough.

Moving on to post some more MNX examples now :-)

Best,


.            .       .    .  . ...Joe

Joe Berkovitz
Founder
Noteflight LLC

49R Day Street
Somerville MA 02144
USA

"Bring music to life"
www.noteflight.com

On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 7:37 PM, Andrew Hankinson <andrew.hankinson@gmail.com
> wrote:

> Hi Joe,
>
> I wasn't actually trying to be confrontational, nor was there any implied
> criticism of MNX in my message. I'm also not trying to butt in on the
> conversation with any comparison of MNX to MEI. That was not my intention.
>
> The "of course" was simply meant to say that it's not an MNX (or
> MusicXML)-or-nothing world. If your goal is interoperability then it's a
> very different goal from accurately representing 'boutique' or
> mutually-incompatible musical semantics. I believe there is room for both,
> but like all things it cannot be achieved without compromise. If you want
> to ensure Alex's example is readable (and writeable) by a wide range of
> applications with varying levels of musical sophistication, you will likely
> have to sacrifice something in the representation to achieve that.
>
> MEI, as you rightly point out, sacrifices complexity in developing
> applications that will render it for increased flexibility in its
> representational capabilities. That's something that we're very open about
> as a community. But the representational power that we gain is probably why
> MEI appeals to a broad range of scholars, where the semantics of the
> notation are just as important (if not moreso) as its appearance in a
> rendering environment.
>
> So to be clear, I am absolutely supportive of the MNX initiative and I
> would hope that alternate ideas (and voices from other communities) can
> have a place in this W3C community group. I think, though, that it is
> useful to acknowledge that "all is not lost" should you need to make
> compromises in the design of MNX to accommodate a broad interoperability
> mandate, and that there are alternate solutions available if that's what is
> needed.
>
> -Andrew
>
> > On 4 Apr 2017, at 22:16, Joe Berkovitz <joe@noteflight.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Andrew,
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 4:56 PM, Andrew Hankinson <
> andrew.hankinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Of course, complex non-standard Western  music notations and semantic
> musical structures are probably better suited to the flexibility that MEI
> provides, so there is always that representational option as well.
> >
> > I think you are comparing MEI with an approach that hasn't been worked
> out here yet. So the "of course" feels a bit hasty to me.
> >
> > I do in fact believe that MEI can represent these sorts of examples with
> some combination of its elements. The problem is, guaranteeing that
> applications will interpret those combinations in a way that reproduces the
> original. When flexibility applies to implementors as well as encoders, all
> bets are off.
> >
> > Do you have an encoding of Alex's example and an application that will
> render that encoding? (I don't, but I'm not making any claim that we have a
> solution to the problem yet :-)
> >
> > ...Joe
>
>
>