Design Patterns in XML Music Representation

Abstract

Design patterns attempt to formalize the discussion of recurring problems and their solutions. This paper introduces several XML design patterns and demonstrates their usefulness in the development of XML music representations. The patterns have been grouped into several categories of desirable outcome of the design process – modularity, separation of data and meta-data, reduction of learning requirements, assistance to tool development, and increase in legibility and understandability. The Music Encoding Initiative (MEI) DTD, from which the examples are drawn, the examples, and other materials related to MEI are available at http://www.people.virginia.edu/ ~pdr4h/.