JSON: Encoding global measures as empty objects

[adrianholovaty]

The "global" object of an MNX document contains a "measures" array, with global information on each measure. At the moment, each measure in the document must be represented by an object — which can result in an array containing lots of empty objects.

For example, see the Multimeasure rests example document:

"global": {
   "measures": [
      {
         "barline": {
            "type": "regular"
         },
         "time": {
            "signature": "4/4"
         }
      },
      {},
      {},
      {},
      {},
      {},
      {}
   ]
}

This is a bit inelegant, and I could see it confusing newcomers to MNX. Is there a better solution?

I should note that the XML version of MNX had this same ugliness, with a bunch of empty elements in the <global> section.

Personally I think it's OK, with the philosophy being that MNX will be created and consumed by programs, but I'm bringing it up in case anybody has an amazing better idea.

[adrianholovaty]

Issue #294 is related — it also concerns empty objects.

[mscuthbert]

It looks fine to me (not from aesthetics but from functionality). Here the default Falsey nature of {} in Python becomes an advantages, since I'd be likely to parse the global object with something like:

globals = {}
for i, obj in enumerate(global):
    if not obj:  # falsy - no attributes.
         continue
    measure_global = MeasureGlobal(obj)
    globals[i] = measure_global

[mscuthbert]

We had a great conversation with some alternates and nothing came better than this way.

[adrianholovaty]

We've just discussed this in our co-chairs meeting and haven't been able to find any better options, so let's mark this as Good Enough.