[MEI-L] "When" element pointing

[Andrew Hankinson]

Hi all,

First, it was great to see everyone in Mainz. Thanks for a wonderful conference.

Now, back to the business at hand: I was chatting with someone about the linking and alignment of audio and video files with a  score. What they're interested in is taking multiple recordings and linking them up to a very sparse score representation (measures or even just sections).

Looking at how the <when> and @when system works, it doesn't look like this is currently possible; that is, it's possible to point from a score element to a single point on a timeline, but it's not possible to point from a time point to an element in the score. By using @when on a score-level element (measure, note, etc.) you're "polluting" the score representation with its location in a single timeline, rather than having the ability to, in multiple recordings, refer to the same score-level element at different time points.

I don't think this would be too hard to add so I will volunteer to actually do the coding, but I would first like to hear if anyone has any objections or suggestions.

Thanks,
-Andrew