Re: Unique ids in MusicXML 3.1 and beyond

On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 4:01 PM, James Sutton <jsutton@dolphin-com.co.uk>
wrote:

> Here is a couple of cases:
>
> 1. If any program (eg OMR engine) needs to output non-MusicXML information
> (eg bounding-boxes of items)  then it could be passed via another channel
> (XML, JSON, text, ..), cross-referencing by uid
>
> 2. a) If a conductor taps a note on her tablet, the note could be
> highlighted on all the players' tablets by passing a uid. The MusicXML
> might be generated by a completely independent program which outputs uids.
>
> b)  the note might be changed, or a notation might be removed or corrected
>
> This does open a general way of referring to elements in a MusicXML file
> and for passing any information about elements which is not catered for in
> the MusicXML format.
>

For these use cases, it would be nice to have a general "selector" API for
music notation in general — not just MusicXML, but any symbolic common
Western notation across any app.

Joe has brought up this idea in the past, and I think it's a great one.
Imagine something like this, to select the second beat of the first voice
in the first bar of the first part:

    bars[0].parts[0].voices[0].beats[1]

It seems inelegant to shoehorn such a thing into MusicXML via a change to
the way IDs work, but I admit I don't understand your original proposal,
despite having read it a few times. :-/

Adrian

--
Adrian Holovaty
Soundslice: https://www.soundslice.com/
Personal: http://www.holovaty.com/