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Something I never understood: music notation is a text based notation system, well established with hundreds of years of standardization. We can't I render shee

Something I never understood: music notation is a text based notation system, well established with hundreds of years of standardization. We can't I render sheet music the way I render text in the browser? I mean with support for copy/paste/etc. MusicXML was a great step, but I still need non-standard, non-open browser plugins for some reason.

programLyrique 11y ago
MusicXML has been transfered to the W3C in July 2015 and there is now a music notation community group: https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/ https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/ So it's becoming a standard. As their new year message (https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/2015/12/10/2015-year-end-update/ https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/2015/12/10/2015-... ) says: "we look forward ... to start more extensive work on an updated web music notation format for the future."
smlacy 11y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "a text-based notation system"? It can be represented as text (MusicXML, "ABC File" and LilyPond source come to mind), but actual engraved music is its own format, and not any more textual than an SVG drawing is. Music notation is excruciatingly complex, especially when it comes to edge cases and more esoteric notations, and the artistic intents of the engravers. It's not just about "copy these notes from here to there" there's actually a ton of other aesthetic information that should be captured as well, that both makes the score more readable, and informs the performers about how to play the music. Asking to cut & paste sections of music is basically like asking to support cut & paste for sub-fragments of SVG objects. It's "possible" but both technically difficult to implement, and of questionable utility. To get a feel for even some "regular" cases of complex music notation take a look at the LilyPond snippet repository here: http://lsr.di.unimi.it/LSR/Browse http://lsr.di.unimi.it/LSR/Browse or even at the LilyPond documentation itself: http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/notation/pitches http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/notation/pitches

programLyrique 11y ago

MusicXML has been transfered to the W3C in July 2015 and there is now a music notation community group: https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/ https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/ So it's becoming a standard. As their new year message (https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/2015/12/10/2015-year-end-update/ https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/2015/12/10/2015-... ) says: "we look forward ... to start more extensive work on an updated web music notation format for the future."

smlacy 11y ago

I'm not sure what you mean by "a text-based notation system"? It can be represented as text (MusicXML, "ABC File" and LilyPond source come to mind), but actual engraved music is its own format, and not any more textual than an SVG drawing is. Music notation is excruciatingly complex, especially when it comes to edge cases and more esoteric notations, and the artistic intents of the engravers. It's not just about "copy these notes from here to there" there's actually a ton of other aesthetic information that should be captured as well, that both makes the score more readable, and informs the performers about how to play the music. Asking to cut & paste sections of music is basically like asking to support cut & paste for sub-fragments of SVG objects. It's "possible" but both technically difficult to implement, and of questionable utility. To get a feel for even some "regular" cases of complex music notation take a look at the LilyPond snippet repository here: http://lsr.di.unimi.it/LSR/Browse http://lsr.di.unimi.it/LSR/Browse or even at the LilyPond documentation itself: http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/notation/pitches http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/notation/pitches