[tei-council] Fwd: Re: tei:notatedMusic

Sun Jun 19 18:16:25 EDT 2011

In general, I am in favour, but I have some concerns, sharpened by hearing Raffaele explain this and discussing it with James.

Firstly, it seems clear to me that this <music> (for short) element is very comparable to <formula>,
and so i'd like to make sure they are aligned. That means I worry about it being in model.global alongside
milestone elements and suchlike trash. I'd rather it was in model.graphicLike - and if that needs adjusting
so be it.

Secondly, I wonder about the <desc>. The example gives <desc>First bar of Chopin's Scherzo No.3 Op.39</desc>,
which looks to me a bit like a <head>. Is this <desc> intended to be a caption, or more like a <figDesc>? would
one normally show it when rendering the doc? what is the difference here between a <desc> and a <label>?

Thirdly, I'd like to generalize the idea of a group of elements which are different ways of 
expressing the same content. The same model could be used for math, and for video,
and for normal graphics. Therefore I wonder if we can name the general concept, and be
clear that <notatedMusic> is just syntactic sugar for  <Thing type="music">. If only
I could think of a name for <Thing> (I suggested <multiGroup> to James and he barfed).
If we have it, can we then use it straightaway for video, please? I am imagining this
grouping mechanism as falling between <figure> (which indicates - to me - a break
in the linear flow of text) and <graphic> (an atomic element which points at a single resource).

Fourthly, the idea of unordered, untyped, bunch of representations  of the same
bit of music (or whatever) is a bit bothersome. I never liked that inside <surface>,
and this perpetuates it. Raffaele's examples seem to belie the underlying idea,
using two _separate_ notatedMusic, and explaining in the desc  in human-reaable
words what the representation is - I don't see the point of this. I'd insist on mimeType.

<notatedMusic>
 <ptr
   target="bar1.xml"
   mimeType="application/vnd.recordare.musicxml"/>
 <desc>First bar of Chopin's Scherzo No.3 Op.39. Encoded in MusicXML</desc></notatedMusic>

<notatedMusic>
 <ptr target="bar1.ly"/>
 <desc>First bar of Chopin's Scherzo No.3 Op.39. Encoded in Lilypond</desc></notatedMusic>

and incidentally here, why use <ptr> parallel to <graphic>? one does not normally transcude
the contents of a <ptr> in the same way as one transcludes <graphic>, so the semantics seems
a bit weird.

--
Sebastian Rahtz      
Head of Information and Support Group, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431

Sólo le pido a Dios
que el futuro no me sea indiferente