[MEI-L] page sizes; multiple staff sizes; def. of point

[Johannes Kepper]

Hi Andrew,

I appreciate your input, and I agree that it's worth to discuss this. The problem I see is where to draw the line. Is this strictly restricted to margins, or does it affect the music as well? Can it make a rendering more dense, to fit into a specific device, or can it move system and page breaks as necessary? Can it be used to switch stem directions, or change clefs for convenience? 

In New Orleans, Laurent, Perry and me had a brief discussion on the prospective layout tree, and that there are ways to mimic a whole lot of its functionality with existing MEI. We came to the conclusion that we might want to rethink the layout tree proposal, to better match the still missing portions. This would probably still go in the direction of a page-based approach to MEI, and maybe this fits well with what you suggested. 

I'd suggest that we merge the two discussions. The only thing I wonder is if it is really of interest to whole MEI-L right now, or if we should come up with a proposal to MEI-L as soon as we have made up our minds first? Could some of the (most welcome!) lurkers on the list give some feedback on that? Would you like to follow a probably very intense discussion with lots of technical details, erroneous paths and changing minds, or would you prefer to get a summary in a couple of weeks? I would really like to get more traffic on MEI-L and discuss these things in the broadest public we have, but it might be somewhat distracting… In case we get no feedback from you out there, we will discuss this on this list, but eventually also during the virtual Technical Team meeting, which is scheduled for next Wednesday. If there's anybody interested in participating with that, please contact Perry or me beforehand to make sure you get the link…

Best,
Johannes



Am 08.11.2012 um 11:43 schrieb Andrew Hankinson <andrew.hankinson at mail.mcgill.ca>:

> Perhaps I'm muddying the waters, but should we start looking at ways of further separating the musical structure from the actual appearance? More specifically, using CSS to control the appearance of elements, rather than interweaving the visual and semantic structure.
> 
> For instance, page margins, staff sizes, cue sizes -- all of this could be specified in a different style sheet for different media: print, tablet, mobile phones, web browsers, etc. A print style sheet could specify in points or inches; a display stylesheet could specify in pixels, ems, or proportions. Different media will have different presentation needs, and if we're to make sure that MEI can operate in both the physical and digital worlds simultaneously, this question will become more important, not less.
> 
> I'm not *completely* convinced of this since it does complicate lots of things, but I think it's worthy of at least a bit of discussion.
> 
> -Andrew
> 
> On 2012-11-07, at 5:27 PM, Laurent Pugin <laurent at music.mcgill.ca> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 10:25 AM, Byrd, Donald A. <donbyrd at indiana.edu> wrote:
>> On Tue, 6 Nov 2012 21:49:55 -0800, Craig Sapp <craigsapp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Don,
>> 
>> On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 8:54 PM, Byrd, Donald A. <donbyrd at indiana.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Finally (and I suspect MEI already handles this), I'd like to point out
>> that two sizes of staves -- "normal" and "cue-size" -- aren't always
>> enough; there are published performing editions that use three staff sizes.
>> (In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if editions with _four_ sizes exist,
>> though I don't know of any.)
>> 
>> 
>> I have seen at least three sizes in a score before, and this would
>> theoretically allow for four sizes:
>> 
>> In a piano/instrumental score, the piano part typically has the
>> instrumental part displayed above it in a slightly smaller size.  And I
>> have seen ossia parts for the instrumental staff which in turn would be
>> smaller than the instrumental staff size.  So if the piano part also had an
>> ossia, then there would be four staff sizes, unless the ossia for the piano
>> is the same size as the instrumental part (which it probably should).
>> 
>> Right. My list of CMN extremes
>> 
>>  http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/donbyrd/CMNExtremes.htm
>> 
>> lists the J. C. Bach Concerto for Harpsichord or Piano and Strings in E-flat, Op. 7 no. 5 (Dobereiner ed., 1927), where the 3rd size appears briefly, for an ossia. I'm sure I've seen other instances but I can't recall any; if you have other(s) handy, I'd love to hear about 'em (though I'm not sure others on this list would).
>> 
>> The number of possible sizes would be unlimited since it can be defined for every staff individually (in staffDef element) if necessary. Our proposal was nonetheless to have a cue-size for the most common cases where we have only one size of cue-size staves and to have it defined at a higher level (in scoreDef element).
>> 
>> Laurent
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