[MEI-L] Question for users of the <annot> element

[David Lewis]

Dear all,

[Please accept my apologies for using the full list for this. If you’re not interested in annotations or pull requests, please look away now.]

Following on from discussions within the community on this list and at conferences, I’ve just raised a very small pull request to update the guidelines for the <annot> element and to add @func.

It’s at the URL below, and I’d welcome any feedback:

https://github.com/music-encoding/music-encoding/pull/1743

Best wishes,

David

> On 6 May 2025, at 18:06, David Lewis <david.lewis at oerc.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> As some of you may have noticed, Verovio has recently gained the ability to display annotations that refer to parts of a score (i.e. not the header information or commentary about the encoding itself).
> 
> In the process of adding this, we had a small discussion about how to characterise different uses of <annot> in MEI so that software can interpret them clearly. Since the guidelines are at times a little unspecific (or confusing), we’re interested in hearing from people who are _already using_ <annot> in their encodings.
> 
> As a preliminary step, we have used a particular @type value on <annot> (<annot type="score">) to specify the sorts of annotation that we actually want to display, but this is a temporary measure. @type is not intended to carry important semantics in this way, but we can use it without changing the current schema.
> 
> Before we propose a longer term solution, we’d like to check for unintended consequences. If you've used <annot> before or are using it now, we'd like to hear how the following options  would affect your work or your encodings.
> 
> 1. Introduce a @motivation attribute (informed by web annotation and TEI) with a fixed set of values – assessing, bookmarking, classifying, commenting, describing, editing, highlighting, identifying, linking, moderating, questioning, replying, tagging. New motivations would have to be created as part of external authorities linked using motivation.auth / motivation.url
> 
>   It has been suggested that we would distinguish annotations to display from others by the presence or absence of @motivation, or by the specific values of @motivation
> 
> 2. Use @func or some other relatively lightweight approach to distinguish (e.g. <annot func="score">
> 
> 3. Use a new, additional element for the things we need to distinguish (TEI uses <annotation> and <note>, which MEI can't for obvious reasons)
> 
> These options are not exclusive – we can have @motivation, @func _and_ different elements. Any one of them has the potential to help clarify things, but it could also complicate existing uses or make unclear what is currently clear.
> 
> We look forward to benefiting from the combined experience of the community.
> 
> Thanks for your input
> 
> David Lewis & Kevin Page
> AHRC Annote Project