Co-chair meeting minutes: 5 June, 2025

MNX

Paul Overell raised issue #424 concerning the encoding of an octave clef in one of the examples. This raised some interesting issues about the encoding of octaves. We decided that we should use the same ottava amount object used in octave lines, and we will add a show-octave boolean defaulting true to determine whether the octave indicator should be shown. To specify an actual clef glyph, which can almost always be inferred from the combination of clef staff position and octave amount, there’s a glyph value that can specify a SMuFL symbol.

Regarding beams (issue #419) we spent a bit more time discussing the issue of partial beams or hooks. We agreed that we should encode them in the same way as beams, but with the same starting and ending note, and an optional direction object, with possible values of auto, left, or right, defaulting to auto. We also agreed that we should make primary beams required if the application encodes beams, and that secondary beams can be derived. We propose that we will also add some information to time signatures to define metrical structures that will make it easier to derive, and that in due course we will also add a “supports beams” feature that would also allow applications to specify that they do not encode beams at all. Adrian will write up these further changes in due course.

Next meeting

The next co-chairs’ meeting is scheduled for Thursday 19 June 2025.