Organ Specifications in XML
(a proposed standard)

This is a proposal for a standard format for storing and transmitting organ specifications. There are a number of on-line repositories of organ specifications, including Osiris and the IOF. Each one uses a different format for storing specs, none of which are well optimized for advanced searching or data analysis, often being simply semi-formatted or unformatted text files. This proposed standard will make it feasible to perform data analysis on a level heretofore unattainable.

Why Bother?

This effort grew out of the development of the Encyclopedia of Organ Stops. Research for that project included trying to answer questions like:

• What is the earliest known example of a given stop name, or of a set of synonyms?
• What is the distribution of a given stop over a range of pitches? That is, how often does it appear at 16', 8', 4', etc.?
• Is a given stop more common in one country than another?
• Did a given builder ever use a given stop?
• What division is a given stop most often found in?

Tools were built for searching the existing archives, but the relatively unformatted nature of the data necessitated a considerable amount of hand-sifting through data. A better data format would have made these questions, and others, answerable simply by issuing the right database query. The use of such statistics can be used in many areas of organ research.

Why XML?

XML has emerged as a universal meta-format that is well suited for this task, and for which a large body of software exists. Therefore, this proposed standard is based on XML, and consists mainly of an XML DTD (Document Type Definition) and guidelines for its use. An XML Schema is also under development. More information on XML may be found at http://www.w3.org/XML.

Documentation

Complete documentation on the OrganSpec XML standard may be found here:

The Complete Specification (no frames)

Downloadable Complete Specification (zipped archive, 91k)

Version 0.1 - archive of the original version 0.1 spec, now obsolete.

Software

Software to support the OrganSpec standard is under development. The following software is available:

C# .Net Class Library - a class library for reading and writing OrganSpec files.

OrganSpecEdit - a Microsoft Windows .Net application for creating, editing and viewing OrganSpec files.

Java Class Library - a class library for reading and writing OrganSpec files.

Other tools under development include:

• A Java application for creating, editing and viewing OrganSpec files.
• Formatting software to convert organ specs to nicely formatted HTML, plain ASCII text, or other formats.
• Tools to aid in the process of converting existing organ specs from semi-formatted text files to this standard format.

Your Comments are Needed!

Please send any comments, corrections or suggestions to:

Ed Stauff - ed@mewsic.SPAM_SUX.com

Revision History