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Re: RE: The limits of XML mean the limits of my data world

• From: Jim DeLaHunt <list+xml-dev@jdlh.com>
• To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
• Date: Mon, 30 May 2022 14:09:53 -0700

Dimitre:

On Sun, May 29, 2022 at 11:13 PM Imsieke, Gerrit, le-tex <gerrit.imsieke@le-tex.de> wrote:

You can express or represent (I regard both terms as synonymous wrt the
current discussion) such an overlap in XML, see for example how the
Common Music Notation handles overlap in beams or slurs (search for
"overlap" on [1]). It's just that you cannot express it using
overlapping elements.

[1] https://music-encoding.org/guidelines/v4/content/cmn.html

The fact is that no conductor in the world is using CMN, do they? :)

Quite the contrary. Almost all conductors use Common Music Notation, if they have a score at all. Because Common Music Notation is the term for 'Just the "old-fashioned", non-xml-based musical scores ...'.

The link at [1] is to documentation of MEI (Music Encoding Initiative), an XML-based language for describing music scores in various notations, including Common Music Notation. (There are other notations for music scores, such tablatures for guitars, neumes for medieval chant, etc.)

I might re-word Gerrit's comment as "see for example how MEI handles the case when Common Music Notation beams or slurs overlap measure boundaries". It is interesting because MEI has a fundamental structure, the <measure> element, which corresponds to a CMN measure. CMN beams and slurs can cross measure boundaries. MEI has a way to represent the initial end of a beam or slur within one <measure> element, and final end of that beam or slur within a later <measure> element. I believe that is the "overlap" to which Gerrit was referring.

If "XML is one's language" and they have to conduct an orchestra, what are the chances they will use [MEI] and not  the [CMN, i.e.] "old-fashioned", non-xml-based musical scores ?
Does even a single such example exist?

Of course not. For the same reason that I would rather read a novel as formatted text rather than XML-based DocBook[2] source representation of the novel. It is the old story of it being valuable to represent content in a markup language for authoring and workflow, and to render it into a different representation for human consumption.

[2] https://docbook.org/

Best regards,
     —Jim DeLaHunt

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.   --Jim DeLaHunt, jdlh@jdlh.com     http://blog.jdlh.com/ (http://jdlh.com/)
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• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: RE: The limits of XML mean the limits of my data world
    • From: Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com>

• References:
  • The limits of XML mean the limits of my data world
    • From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
  • RE: The limits of XML mean the limits of my data world
    • From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
  • Re: RE: The limits of XML mean the limits of my data world
    • From: Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com>
  • Re: RE: The limits of XML mean the limits of my data world
    • From: "Imsieke, Gerrit, le-tex" <gerrit.imsieke@le-tex.de>
  • Re: RE: The limits of XML mean the limits of my data world
    • From: Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com>