Daniel and Alain, I confess my ignorance as to music printing and exchange software, and it had been a long day and a longer evening. As usual, when late at night, I tried to draw the general to the specific.
You accurately "read between the lines" that my thrust was for data exchange. And that my long example of the attempts by some companies to monopolize the internet (considered a "free resource", although it is actually supported by the owners of the various main frames that do the routing in the network) was meant to speak to that issue. I'm glad to hear that there was an attempt at a universal data exchange format (NIF), and sad that it hasn't been used (although that might be an inadequacy on its part). And pleased to hear that there is another attempt (Music XML). The point is not that there should be free access to a programmer's product, that would be counter productive to innovation. It is that there should be a basic protocol agreed to by all involved for data exchange, rather than a proprietary protocol that limits it. If any programmer wants to provide bells and whistles within his work piece that is fine, and each user will have a preferred program for creating and printing music (or anything else in some other protocol). Speaking specifically of music the ideal would be a protocol that could transmit without regard to notation. The absolute notes themselves. Whether that was done as serial notes with individual time signatures, then the next line (with voids for open chords, etc) so that there would be ten or twenty series for a full score with a header to define them - or a parallel set of notes (again with the rests and the voids) is irrelevant. But that is what I would see as an ideal data exchange protocol. One that is converted from notation to notes for transmission, and back to notation for reception. Then the individual programs can treat them as they choose. Perhaps a modification, and expansion, of the MIDI protocol. The notation should be the result of the local program, the transmission should be the absolute notes. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
