Regarding the recent posts about digital archiving: MusicXML was designed in part for just this sort of archival purpose. Because it is a text-based format - not binary like PDFs - even the simplest Notepad-like program on a computer will read the file. Because everything in the format is spelled out, not abbreviated, anyone can read the file and understand the majority of it, even without documentation.
For musical meaning that can be interpreted by both people and computers, as opposed to musical images, MusicXML is as archival as it gets so far. It complements PDFs by representing the musical meaning, while PDFs represent every formatting detail. The Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Gesaumtausgabe is just one of the organizations involved with critical editions that are looking at MusicXML as a key technology for their future work. If you are interested and read German, see Dr. Joachim Veit's article "Mediale Revolution? Perspektiven und Probleme neuer Formen der Musikedition" at: http://www.weber-gesamtausgabe.de/duesseldorfveit.pdf For most musicians, the practical side of this is being able to reuse your music if your software company goes out of business (like Music Printer Plus), or is bought by someone who discontinues support for it on your computer (like Apple did to Emagic's PC users). With Finale, you will be able to move your files over to other future programs. No such luck with Sibelius, at least not yet. Michael Good Recordare LLC www.recordare.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
