Marion, I'll make one last try at what I was saying. I was not speaking of eliminating tabulature or staff notation - or any other way of passing music from one person to another. I'll have to be more boring than usual and mention that I spent a long time in data communication - and still have an original copy of the Proposed Standards from mid seventies somewhere in my bookshelves. That standard, which was basically implemented as proposed, had seven levels of activity - the seventh Hell being the raw transmission and machine level handshaking. It is the sixth level I'm thinking of - the assembly of the message into a standard format.
Using a parallel standard the various music software programs could be transmitted between the different programs. A header to define the notation, the key, the voices and other relevant things. Then a message body to send the "music". That way any receiving program with the capability of that notation could recreate it. And in fact the header wouldn't need to define the notation, if the standard were done well. The receiving program could be asked to print it in any notation. Notations are a readable representation of music, and each has its value for particular instruments. I read tab for my lute and staff for my harp - and they are convertible from one to the other, we all do that by hand (and some with a computer program). So my suggestion was only that there be a uniform notation for transmission that all music software vendors would agree to so they could accept any other software's transmission. Much music is sent in a graphic format, that is "in effect" a pixel equivalent. Then there is the protocol for "audio transmission". My suggestion is merely that there be a lower level protocol that then can be translated by the receiving program into the desired format. This is only for the data transmission. It would be a difficult task, as all subtleties of notation would have to be covered (like the possible different frets for the same note), but if done it would ease the task of all programmers in the future. BTW, one can reflect pronunciation in print - consider G.B.Shaw's spelling of "fish" - "ghoti" (gh as in enough, o as in the plural of woman, and ti as in motion). Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
