Music Notation

I think that there is a need for standardization of Web music notation, but it seems to be hard to get support for this because the primary beneficiaries would, as far as I can see, be individuals like me — and perhaps you.  There are two use cases that come to my mind, both of which have caused me much time and trouble: 1)There is a LOT of public domain music published on the Web (e.g. CPDL and many, many other similar sites for instrumentalists), but almost all of it is in the form of PDF’s or sometimes MIDI files (which if you need the notes on paper is not the best place to start).  At least for vocalists there is very often a need to transpose the music into a different key.  This is very painful starting with a PDF or MIDI.  It takes a great deal of work to get the music into an editor (there are several routes, but all involve a large amount of manual editing), at which point one can just “push a button”, transpose and print it; 2)There are several music editor applications, the most common of which are Finale and Sibelius.  Interop between these applications is not good, or at least wasn’t the last time I tried it.

In general, it seems incredible to me that there is no widely accepted, standard way, to publish music on the Web in the sense that I’m talking about here.  Current efforts seem to be focussed entirely on publishing binary streams, which is an entirely different issue.