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w3c / musicxml

MusicXML specification
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tuplet brackets cannot be styled #538

Open lemzwerg opened 3 months ago

lemzwerg commented 3 months ago

The only attribute to style a tuplet bracket in a <tuplet> element is line-shape, AFAICS. I think this is not sufficient, both for orthogonality with other, similar spanner elements, and for the needs in critical editions and the like.

I suggest to add a new element <tuplet-bracket> (as a child of <tuplet>) to provide the necessary data, for example, the color or the dash length – I think most of the <bracket> attributes could be re-used.

image

mscuthbert commented 3 months ago

Thanks Werner @lemzwerg -- just wanted to say that I've seen this issue and hope others will weigh in as well.

It is obviously correct that MusicXML would be enhanced by having more configurations features for tuplets. One thing that XML in general makes difficult (at least for the next release which needs to still support the DTD) is transferring what was an attribute into a new element. So I'd like to get more voices on, not just what the benefits will be in the future, but what transition problems people see in the forthcoming decade as both ways of styling tuplet brackets (the existing weaker way using attributes, and the proposed, richer way using a full object) need to be supported.

lemzwerg commented 3 months ago

It's not clear to me what you mean with 'transfer' and 'both ways of styling tuplet brackets', please elaborate. As far as I can see, there is no transfer of attributes at all if you add a new, optional child element, and, as mentioned above, there isn't a second way to style brackets since currently there is no way :slightly_smiling_face: