[MEI-L] Issues with the Sample Encodings

[Christopher Antila]

Greetings MEI-L Members:

I have a set of questions/comments related to the sample encodings in
the "music-encoding" repository, and the musicxml2mei XSLT stylesheets.

It seems that all of the sample files produced with the musicxml2mei
convertor either don't follow the Guidelines completely, or include
errors. While writing the MEI-to-music21 importer, I've found that
importing these files correctly is generally more difficult and less
efficient than it could be, and sometimes impossible.

One of the most troublesome recurring problems is <tupletSpan> elements,
which are supposed to use a @plist attribute to indicate all the
elements within the tuplet (pg.97 of the Guidelines). None of the
<tupletSpan> elements I've seen so far actually use @plist, which leaves
my importer guessing which elements are involved ("git grep" tells me
only four sample files use @plist at all). With my current algorithm,
any tuplet with components in three or more <measure> elements will
necessarily be imported incorrectly (unless it has a @plist).
Furthermore, this guesswork constitutes more than half the processing
time in a sizeable file like Beethoven_op.18.mei.

I do believe that importers should be as forgiving as possible, and that
the tuplet-guessing algorithm must therefore remain in the code, along
with all the other just-in-case algorithms for elements missing a
@plist. However, I also believe that the MEI-provided sample encodings
should be stand-out examples of the highest quality, and that they
should therefore follow all of the guidelines in the Guidelines, even
when not strictly required.

Considering this, my virtually non-existent knowledge of XSLT, and the
current possibility of a move from Google Code to GitHub, I'm wondering
where and how to report my issues. Some of the problems can be fixed
easily by hand-editing certain MEI files (to correct the duration of a
<space> in Joplin_Elite_Syncopations.mei, for instance). Many of them
are difficult to fix (like an enormous swath of missing <tupletSpan>
elements and correspondingly incorrect @tuplet attributes in
Brahms_StringQuartet_Op51_No1.mei), and might be more profitably solved
by adjusting/regenerating the musicxml2mei stylesheet and re-converting
the sample encodings from their MusicXML source.

I'd be happy to lend a hand in any way that I'm able!


Thanks,
Christopher

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