Re: How to get involved

Thank you for the kind and speedy reply Mogens.

I have seen the documentation for <accidental>
<https://usermanuals.musicxml.com/MusicXML/Content/EL-MusicXML-accidental.htm>
but it seems to only accept a few contents: 'sharp', 'flat', 'natural',
'double-sharp', and 'flat-flat'. I confirmed this myself. When I try to
change the contents of that tag to anything other than one of those values,
MuseScore says it is not a valid MusicXML file anymore.

Interestingly, the <accidental> tag seems to be completely irrelevant. If I
have the <alter>1</alter> and <accidental>flat</accidental>, I will see a
sharp. And if I have <alter>-1</alter> and <accidental>sharp</accidental>,
I see a flat. I can leave off the <accidental> tag completely and I will
just see whatever the <alter> is set to. If I leave off the <alter> tag but
include <accidental>, then no accidental shows up!

I don't expect <accidental> to support something like
'Sagittal-sharp-25S-down' right now. But it might be nice if it could
support arbitrary unicode code points. That, combined with the fact that it
accepts a font, would allow me to use it for Sagittal and other microtonal
accidentals. Assuming that there is a way to get <accidental> to work at
all.

On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 12:26 AM mogens@lundholm.org <mogens@lundholm.org>
wrote:

> Hello
>
> In MusicXML all pitches can be specified with the <alter>-command. And
> accidentals
> with the <accidental>-command. But as you write, Finale and Musescore
> will "correct" the
> notes and not preserve, what you wrote. However - I found out that I
> could make two versions
> of the tune: One with the right pitches and one print-version, where
> pitches and accidentals are changed in order to make it look right in
> Musescore and print (Impossible in Finale). But MusicXML is OK.
> In principle so simple - reality something else. For MNX - microtones
> are not allowed.
>
> Kind regards
> Mogens
>
> On 2020-05-12 22:34, Douglas Blumeyer wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I am a new member here. Thank you all in advance for being patient
> > with me as I ramp up.
> >
> > I see that quite a bit of activity is occurring right now with respect
> > both to MusicXML and MNX. I am a software engineer and new music
> > composer. I write my music in code and occasionally wish to generate
> > traditional sheet music for humans to take a crack at the pieces. But
> > they are in alternative tuning systems and it would be great if I
> > could flip an enum around in my code to export as MusicXML with
> > various microtonal notations. However I haven't had luck with this in
> > the past because it doesn't seem MusicXML has support for many common
> > microtonal notations.
> >
> > And when I've used notation software to export and import MusicXML in
> > the recent past, even just exporting and immediately re-importing
> > without making any changes, the format garbles my work to the point of
> > unusability (that or it's MuseScore which can't translate my work into
> > MusicXML well).
> >
> > I want to do whatever I can to help make this happen but I don't know
> > where to start. As a member of this list am I a "co-chair" and can I
> > thus attend the next upcoming meeting? Please let me know how I can
> > best contribute. I have no sense of the political situation here yet
> > so I do not mean to offend or start a fire or anything like that. Just
> > curious at this point.
> >
> > Best,
> > Douglas Blumeyer
>
>