Re: MNX Proposal now Available [via Music Notation Community Group]

Hi Jan,

>> Remember that MusicXML is primarily a graphics standard, designed for sheet music.
> Well, not exactly.
I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree about that.
>> The first pass defining MNX should define it purely as a graphics standard, ignoring any (temporal) meanings.
> No. Make that "Hell No". The lack of some key semantic elements in MusicXML, and from there its utter lack of enforcing programs to dump semantically correct CWMN, is its main deficiency.
MNX is expressly designed to correct MusicXML's deficiencies. I'm sure 
it will be an improvement.
> Degrading MNX to a pure "spatial" standard completely defeats [the] purpose.
This is a misunderstanding: I don't think MNX should be a purely 
"spatial" standard.

> I think it's fair to state that the majority of people interested in MNX are interested in the ability to create applications around MNX file.
As I understand it, MNX is intended to be an interchange format that can 
be shared by score editors (Dorico, capella etc.). Such applications 
already export SVG instantiations of the scores. (I think they will in 
future also be able to export SVG+MIDI instantiations.)

In the "Graphical scores and SVG" thread, Joe's option #2 was:
> Joe:
> 2. SVG (with some relationship to sound) can serve as an intermediate 
> format that represents *a specific rendering* of semantic music 
> notation markup such as MNX, MusicXML, MEI, or anything else.
about which he said:
> Joe:
> [...] Consider that [SVG+MIDI] permits semantic markup to be converted 
> into a format that can be easily displayed and played back by an 
> application that is much simpler than one that processes semantic markup.
Given that score editing applications are large and complicated compared 
with the applications that will be able to use SVG+MIDI, I think there 
may well be even more scope for application development around SVG+MIDI 
than around MNX.

Joe continued:
> Of course, [SVG] is necessarily quite limited in other ways (try 
> transposing it to another key, or reformatting it for a different 
> display size!)
Note that there's an interesting difference between graphical and 
temporal info in SVG+MIDI files: While Joe is right that transposing the 
graphics or reformatting the score is practically impossible when its in 
the form of instantiated SVG, the same is not true for the temporal info.
An SVG+MIDI client application can quite easily change the temporal data 
before using it. For example, without changing the graphics, it can 
change the playback speed, performed pitches, volume, timbres etc... And 
still remain synchronous with the graphics. It could also select between 
completely different, real, embedded recordings.

Just saying...

All the best,
James

Received on Friday, 31 March 2017 12:17:50 UTC