Re: The 2020 Agenda

Dear James,

The co-chairs have just completed our bi-weekly meeting and after discussing your email in our meeting, I am writing a response to you on behalf of the three of us.

Our conclusion is that the group’s charter is still fit for purpose, and the fact that we are not currently working on MNX-Generic does not necessitate any change to the charter. Similarly, since we are not actively working on MNX-Generic, we feel it does not make any sense to retire or in any other way make any decisions about the current state of the specification. Once we are ready to turn our attention as a group back to MNX-Generic, we can debate the merits of the current approach and whether a change is warranted.

We do not expect to be discussing MNX-Generic in detail at the forthcoming virtual community group meeting, and nor do we expect to be discussing any changes in charter or making any decisions about the existing MNX-Generic specification.

We also interpret the lack of agreement from other members of the community in support of your proposal over the past week as assent that the community as a whole agrees with the current priorities being pursued by the co-chairs on behalf of the community. We of course welcome any feedback from other members of the community if this is not the case.

Thanks as always for your energy and dedication to the MNX-Generic project.

With best wishes,

Daniel, on behalf of Michael and Adrian

From: James Ingram <j.ingram@netcologne.de>
Date: Thursday, 5 March 2020 at 11:37
To: "public-music-notation@w3.org" <public-music-notation@w3.org>
Subject: The 2020 Agenda
Resent from: <public-music-notation@w3.org>
Resent date: Thursday, 5 March 2020 at 11:35

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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