The 2020 Agenda

Dear Michael, Adrian, Daniel, All,

Thanks, Michael, Adrian and Daniel for letting us know about your plans 
for the next face-to-face, and the sad fact that it has had to be 
postponed or cancelled.

Here's some feedback:

The minutes of the co-chair's last meeting say:
> The co-chairs discussed the potential agenda for the meeting. Michael 
> proposes that the meeting could serve as the formal kick-off for the 
> MusicXML 3.2 project, discussing both specific issues that are in 
> scope, and whether or not the project should follow the same approach 
> as MusicXML 3.1, i.e. to avoid introducing changes for structural 
> issues being addressed in MNX-Common. Adrian will also provide an 
> update on the MNX-Common project.

I'm very much in favour of both formally kicking-off the MusicXML 3.2 
project and encouraging Adrian's work on MNX-Common. It was a *very* 
good idea to define MNX-Common by example, and to leave the formal 
specifications for later!

However, I think the CG's goals need to be reviewed.
According to [1], we are supposed to be:
1. developing "...specifications for notated music used by web, desktop 
and mobile applications, and
2. enabling "...applications that do not depend on particular notational 
systems..."

We agreed a year ago, to shelve any discussion of GMNX (a.k.a 
MNX-Generic), so neither of these objectives is currently being addressed.

I think the co-chairs (or the CG as a whole) need to decide either to 
drop the original objectives (i.e. that this CG is only interested in 
desktop CWMN applications) or to find some way to keep them.

/Independently of the result of that decision/, I would like to propose 
that the /MNX-Generic Draft Specification/ [2] be formally abandoned. It 
has been exhaustively discussed, and I don't think anyone is interested 
in pursuing it further. What does the CG think?

My own opinion is that it would be possible to agree some standards, 
expressed in terms of existing web technologies (HTML, CSS, SVG, Web 
MIDI API, Web Audio etc.), which would meet the original goals. These 
would consist of standard container hierarchies, object classes, the use 
of element ids etc., so that files could be reliably parsed by (web and 
other) applications that may not yet have been written.

I also think that there are simple ways to tailor such standards to 
/any/ music notation (an "event" is an "event" in any notation). In 
particular, CWMN would be coded in a way closely resembling MNX-Common. 
Adrian's work is very important in that respect. MNX-Common would be the 
bridge between MusicXML and the web.

If the co-chair has no time to work in this direction, perhaps we could 
try to set up a sub-group with that aim in mind?

Best wishes,
James Ingram

[1 ]https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/wiki/Group_Charter
[2] https://w3c.github.io/mnx/specification/generic/

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