We now have 50 applications supporting the MusicXML
format - including the commercial market leaders, innovative new products,
and open source projects. So I am curious as to how
MusicXML measures up against other document-oriented XML projects. Are
there studies that compare adoption rates of XML document formats by software in
different application areas? Pointers to such work would be most welcome!
Congratulations. I'm not aware of any such studies. What one can
say is that adoption rates vary enormously. In genealogy, XML is nowhere,
because no-one wants to move away from an entrenched non-XML standard that
meets 80% of the requirement. In other areas, XML support is a
sine-qua-non: you can't produce personal taxation software in the UK
unless it is capable of filing your tax return
electronically.
You're actually looking for two preconditions to an XML standard taking
off. First of all, there needs to be some magic that causes a standard to
happen, which depends on there being (a) a user need for a standard, and (b)
the right market forces in the industry to establish one. Secondly, that
standard needs to be XML-based - which is likely to be the case if and only
the preconditions for creating a (new) standard arose since 1999 or
so.
I'm
pleased that this appears to have happened in the music area, since at one
time there seemed to be so many proposed standards that there was a serious
risk they would all fail. There's never any guarantee that just because
everyone agrees a standard would be a good thing, it will necessarily
happen.
Michael Kay
