Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections
Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections |
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| Introduction | Sustainability Factors | Content Categories | Format Descriptions | Contact | |
| Full name | MusicXML, Version 3.1 |
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| Description |
MusicXML 3.1 is an openly documented XML-based format for representing Western musical notation, developed by the W3C Music Notation Community Group and released in December 2017. Its specification is available both as XML document type definitions (DTDs) and in W3C's XML Schema Language under a liberal license following the form established by W3C for specifications produced by W3C Community Groups, the W3C Community Final Specification Agreement. Previous MusicXML versions were released by Recordare LLC and MakeMusic, Inc. MusicXML is designed for sharing sheet music files between applications, and for archiving sheet music files for use in the future. For a description of MusicXML in general, see MusicXML_family. According to Working group releases its first MusicXML update from Scoring Notes, Michael Good, MakeMusic’s vice president of MusicXML technologies and co-chair of the W3C group, stated that MusicXML 3.1 resolved 65 substantive issues in four major categories:
Good said that “Daniel Spreadbury’s invention and advocacy of the SMuFL font standard provided the main impetus for this release. MusicXML needed to improve its SMuFL support in order to maintain its current level of interoperability. SMuFL also provided the technology needed to solve formerly difficult problems such as the mixture of text with arbitrary musical symbols.” For more information about SMuFL, see Notes below. For detailed changes since version 3.0, see MusicXML Version 3.1 (Final Community Group Report, 07 December 2017), which has links to the discussions relating to each issue. According to the release announcement, more than half the issues related to SMuFL. Since MusicXML files are often large in comparison to the native binary formats used by score-writing software, they are often distributed as ZIP files, using Deflate compression and .mxl as file extension. See ZIP_PK for information about ZIP in general. MusicXML 3.1 introduced a small change to the specification for this package. The first file in a .mxl package should have the name mimetype and declare the Internet Media Type (MIME type) of application/vnd.recordare.musicxml, following the form used in EPUB 3.1. |
| Production phase | See MusicXML_family. |
| Relationship to other formats | |
| Subtype of | MusicXML_family, MusicXML File Format Family |
| Has earlier version | MusicXML_3_0, MusicXML, Version 3. Scores compliant with version 3.0 are also valid version 3.1 files. |
| Affinity to | In addition to the straightforward XML version, a compressed form of MusicXML has been defined, based on the ZIP format, and using the .mxl file extension. Compressed MusicXML is not currently described separately on this website. |
| Defined via | XML_DTD, XML Document Type Definition |
| Defined via | XML_Schema_1_0, W3C XML Schema Language |
| LC experience or existing holdings | See MusicXML_family. |
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| LC preference | See MusicXML_family. |
| Disclosure | Version 3.1 of MusicXML is fully and openly documented through XML document type definitions (DTDs) and a specification in the W3C XML Schema language. Since July 2015, the MusicXML specification has been developed and maintained by the W3C Music Notation Community Group. Earlier versions were made available by Recordare LLC and MakeMusic, Inc. |
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| Documentation |
The specification for MusicXML, Version 3.1 is available from https://github.com/w3c/musicxml/releases/tag/v3.1 as XML schema and DTD files. An introduction is at http://w3c.github.io/musicxml/ as MusicXML Version 3.1, Final Community Group Report (07 December 2017). Extensive tutorials on the MusicXML website support the specification. |
| Adoption | See MusicXML_family. |
| Licensing and patents |
The MusicXML DTD and XSD files for Version 3.1 are freely redistributable under the W3C Community Final Specification Agreement. See W3C Community Final Specification Agreement (FSA) Deed. This agreement incorporates commitments made by participants in the community group, using the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA). |
| Transparency | See MusicXML_family. |
| Self-documentation | See MusicXML_family. |
| External dependencies | See MusicXML_family. |
| Technical protection considerations | See MusicXML_family. |
| Text | |
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| Normal rendering | See MusicXML_family. |
| Integrity of document structure | See MusicXML_family. |
| Integrity of layout and display | See MusicXML_family. |
| Functionality beyond normal rendering | See MusicXML_family. |
| Tag | Value | Note |
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| Filename extension | musicxml xml |
The .musicxml extension was introduced with version 3.1 of the MusicXML specification. In practice, the .xml extension is also still in use. The container.dtd file as distributed in the schema download for MusicXML 3.1, states, "The recommended file extension for uncompressed MusicXML files is .musicxml. Older versions of MusicXML use .xml as the extension for uncompressed MusicXML files, so it is recommended that applications be prepared to read files with the .xml extension as well." |
| Internet Media Type | application/vnd.recordare.musicxml+xml |
See IANA registration for uncompressed MusicXML. For compressed MusicXML files, the media type application/vnd.recordare.musicxml is used. |
| Magic numbers | See note. | No magic number is specified in the IANA registration. For MusicXML 3.1 the file typically begins with <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> followed by a DOCTYPE declaration that includes the string PUBLIC "-//Recordare//DTD MusicXML 3.1. Note that case is not significant in this string. |
| Indicator for profile, level, version, etc. | See note. | The version of MusicXML used in a document is found in the version attribute in the root element (<score-partwise>, <score-timewise>, or <opus>). For MusicXML 3.1, the value should be "3.1". A document with no version attribute in the root element is assumed to be in MusicXML version 1.0. |
| XML DOCTYPE declaration | See note. | For MusicXML 3.1 the DOCTYPE declaration for a document should include the string PUBLIC "-//Recordare//DTD MusicXML 3.1. The exact form of the declaration depends on whether the root element is <score-partwise>, <score-timewise>, or <opus>. |
| Uniform Type Identifier (Mac OS) | com.recordare.musicxml.uncompressed |
Documented in container.dtd as distributed in the schema download for MusicXML 3.1. |
| Pronom PUID | See note. | PRONOM does not distinguish between versions of MusicXML. See http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/fmt/896 for entry for the entire MusicXML family. |
| Wikidata Title ID | See note. | Wikidata does not have separate Title IDs for versions of MusicXML. See https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q653301 for information for entire MusicXML family. |
| General |
Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL): The goal of SMuFL is to establish a new standard glyph mapping for musical symbols that is optimised for modern font formats and that can be adopted by a variety of software vendors and font designers, for the benefit of all users of music notation software. In March 2019, Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL), Version 1.3 was published as a Final Community Group Report on 5 March 2019. Version 1.3 is the first version released by the W3C Music Notation Community Group. Previous SMuFL versions were released by Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. SMuFL provides the basis for music font mapping by taking advantage of Unicode and OpenType fonts. SMuFL uses the standard Private Use Area in the Basic Multilingual Plane (starting at code point U+E000), and currently includes just over 2440 recommended characters, plus several hundred further optional but recommended glyphs, primarily ligatures (i.e. two or more symbols drawn as a single glyph) and stylistic alternates (i.e. a different appearance for the same character with equivalent meaning). SMuFL is a superset of the Unicode Musical Symbols range, and it is recommended that common characters are included in fonts both at code points in SMuFL and in the Unicode Musical Symbols range. Room for future expansion has been left, so code points are not contiguous. The code point of each character in SMuFL, starting with SMuFL 1.0 is intended to be immutable, and likewise every character has a canonical name, also intended to be immutable. Information about SMuFL-compatible fonts is at https://www.smufl.org/fonts/. |
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| History |
MusicXML was originally developed by Michael Good of Recordare LLC., with Version 1.0 released in January 2004. Recordare was acquired by MakeMusic, Inc., in late 2011. Copyright in the specifications through 3.0 was transferred to MakeMusic at the same time. MakeMusic made versions through 3.0 of the specification available under a royalty-free license. According to a 2015 post from Scoring Notes, MakeMusic and Steinberg transferred development of MusicXML and SMuFL to the W3C Music Notation Community Group on July 28, 2015. MusicXML 3.1 was released in December 2017. A complete version history for MusicXML is at https://www.musicxml.com/for-developers/version-history/. |
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