Alternative Design Goals for a General Music Markup Language

Abstract

Design goals determine the particular structure of a markup language, while the philosophy of what markup languages are about determine the framework within which its structure is developed. Most existing markup languages for music reflect low level design strategies compared to design that adheres to the high level philosophy of markup languages. An approach to an XML-based music markup language from the perspective of SGML would differ from an approach from a markup language such as HTML. An ideal structure for a general markup language for music is proposed that follows a purist approach and which results in a different kind of XML-based music markup language than most present music markup languages offer.