[MEI-L] clef as milestone element

[TW]

Hi Andrew,

do you want the clef element for rendering purposes?  As far as I
understand, for storing rendering information you're developing a
separate layout tree anyway, so can't you record the clef (and even
the system break) there?  Then the musical data doesn't get cluttered
with layout information.  When there are different readings of
differing length, then different layouts are required anyway.  When
generating performance material, different layouts for the score and
each individual part are required as well (or would this be out of
scope?).

I hope I didn't totally misunderstand the issue.

Thomas Weber


2011/5/31 Andrew Hankinson, Mr <andrew.hankinson at mail.mcgill.ca>:
> Hi all,
>
> tl;dr Should clefs be considered a milestone element?
>
> The <clef> element in MEI is currently only allowed within <clefchange> and <staffdef> elements. I can understand why, since <staff> is supposed to reflect musical linearity and not be affected by system breaks, which is more a physical artifact of page layout. So, a <clef> should only occur if a) it's part of the staff definition, or b) it's changing.
>
> *However*, an interesting question comes up when encoding clefs at the beginning of systems. Currently, the only way to encode this is to wrap a <clef> in a <clefchange>, but for most of the time, it's not actually changing; it's only a "courtesy" clef.
>
> So, to give an example. Suppose the following:
>
> <staff n="1">
>  <layer n="1">
>    <sb n="1"/>
>    <clef line="3" shape="F"/>
>    <note pname="f" oct="3"/>
>    <note pname="g" oct="3"/>
>    ...
>    <sb n="2" />
>    <clef line="3" shape="F"/>
>    <note pname="c" oct="3"/>
>    <note pname="d" oct="3"/>
>
>    ...etc...
>
> This is currently invalid MEI, but I'm not really sure how to capture the clefs at the beginning of each system without a) incorporating them into a <clefchange> (semantically wrong), b) allowing <clef> directly within layer, or (really crazy) c) changing <sb> to include clef information (e.g., allow <clef> within <sb>, and/or add @clef.shape and @clef.line directly on <sb>.
>
> What I'd like to suggest is option b), but I'm sure there's a very good reason why I'm wrong. :)
>
> -Andrew
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