Re: Proposal for Encoding Common Musical Notation in Unicode

Dear Michael, dear all,

First — thank you for the early and interested feedback I have received so far from the community.

Second — I have the same concern, that a demonstrable chain MusicXML ➝ Unicode ➝ drawing (even without rules for spacing and collision-avoiding) is close to necessary. Possibly also a reverse chain Unicode ➝ MusicXML would be of interest.

I am sufficiently skilled at MS Excel to have been able to upload the Chopin MusicXML file, and build formulas so as the Unicode representation be automatically computed, to the extent described in the document. But I am no developer (I play with code on occasions), and could not get anywhere starting from scratch.

If someone around here knows how to move forward, I would be glad to be provided with a starting point, maybe a little more than a starting point as a matter of fact. I have no idea how to parse XML or text (tokenize?) in practice, neither do I know how to draw forms in a browser or in anything else. If the underlying framework be there, it would make a huge difference — I can modify code reasonably well, but not build it.
If people want to join the fun, they are most welcome.

Also, the proposal is not immutable. I consider I author it at the moment and will update (and acknowledge, needless to say) as per the feedback I receive, but if at some point it turns out there is collective interest in change management, then I would rather switch to collective handling. 

Best regards,
Bertrand



> Le 1 sept. 2020 à 18:46, Michael Good <mgood@makemusic.com> a écrit :
> 
> Dear Bertrand,
> 
> Thank you for sharing this proposal in advance of submitting it to the Unicode Consortium. You have clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this!
> 
> This proposal works very differently from current music notation software used to produce the world’s sheet music. Do you have some working software that implements this proposal? I am thinking both of software that converts a MusicXML file into this text-based representation, as well as software that can display this text representation in a web browser as music notation.
> 
> If you do have such software, would you be willing to share it or point us to it so that people in the community can evaluate how well this works in practice?
> 
> My preference would be to have working software that has been tested by members of the music notation software community before submitting this proposal to the Unicode Consortium. The Unicode standard is not a place for research and development on text representations. Rather it lets us standardize text representation systems that are already in use.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Michael Good
> VP of MusicXML Technologies
> MakeMusic, Inc.
> 
>> On Aug 31, 2020, at 4:46 PM, Bertrand Émerit <bertrand@emerit.com <mailto:bertrand@emerit.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear ladies and gentlemen,
>> 
>> On September 30th I plan to submit the attached proposal to the Unicode Consortium.
>> Unless you ask differently, I intend to Cc you of the mail, while making plain in the body that this is for your information, as you are mentioned in the document, and in no way an endorsement.
>> 
>> I will be honoured for any review or comment of the documents. Feel free to forward as needed, and I would appreciate that you inform me if you forward outside your organization.
>> 
>> The proposal should fit nicely if not enrich (and certainly not make a dent in, or replace) your current works, including SMuFL, MusicXML and MEI.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> Bertrand EMERIT
>> +33672966996
>> bertrand@emerit.com <mailto:bertrand@emerit.com>