MNX Specification Working Group meeting: August 11, 2026

Robert Patterson joined Adrian, Myke and Daniel for this meeting.

Staff lines

We discussed Adrian’s proposal for how to specify the number of lines in a staff, issue #531. We spent a lot of time discussing whether the information about staves in general really belongs in a part (because this has big consequences for things like doubling instruments, as at the moment both instruments would be encoded in the same part, with the implication that the displayed switch between instruments will occur in the same place in all layouts). We decided to park that concern and instead take as read that wherever the information about staves actually lives, we still need a way to describe the number of staff lines and their separation.

We discussed various use cases that need to be considered, such as the two-line staff often used in Orff Schulwerk scores, staves where a regular five-line staff needs to be augmented with an extra staff line for advanced instrumental techniques, changes in the number of staff lines at different points in the music, and so on.

After much discussion, we have settled upon the idea that staves can be defined in part measures, so there will be a convention that you should define one at the start of the first measure; this will allow changes in staff information from measure to measure. Adrian will update the proposal in the issue, and Myke and Robert will provide some further music examples to help shape the proposal.

Next meeting

The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 25 August 2026.