Editor's Message

  1. Electronic Publishing and Scholarly Dialog

  2. MTO Reader Survey

  3. Music Theory International

  4. MTO Hypertext Subscriber Directory

  5. Subscriber Services

  6. Auto-responder Addresses: Instant Documentation by Email


1. Electronic Publishing and Scholarly Dialog

Publishing has traditionally been a slow affair. From the time new research leaves a scholar's desk, as a journal article or a book, until the time it appears in print, several years may elapse. Yet more time passes until scholars around the world become aware of new findings or perspectives, and can react to them in print. Electronic publishing on the Internet has significantly changed that scenario. For scholarly electronic journals, the time lag from submission to circulation has been reduced from years to months, the lag for peer responses to days, thanks to electronic discussion forums like mto-talk.

The last and present issue of MTO are excellent examples of the benefits of electronic publishing. Roger Wibberley's provocative essay on musica ficta in MTO 2.5 stimulated an interesting dialog on mto-talk among Cristle Collins Judd (U.S.), Victor Grauer (U.S.), Nicolas Meeus (Belgium), Jonathan Walker (Northern Ireland), and Wibberley (England). This issue of MTO, appearing only two months later, includes commentaries on the essay by Margaret Bent, whose notion of "diatonic ficta" was a focus of Wibberley's article, and by Jonathan Walker, who pleads a case against the unjust verdict on Just Intonation in performance practice.

Electronic publishing may never replace print publishing, but its rapidity, versatility (multimedia) and growing accessibility are clear advantages over print, assuring it a prominent and unique place in the future scholarly world.

MTO is pleased to offer subscribers current research and responses. We encourage readers to contribute to discussions on mto-talk, and to submit essays and commentaries for publication in MTO.

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2. MTO Reader Survey

When MTO began in February, 1993, the chief means of distributing documents on the Internet were email, command-line "anonymous" FTP (File Transfer Protocol), and Gopher. The World-Wide Web was in its infancy, known to few and used by even fewer. Netscape, today the most popular graphical user interface ("browser") for accessing Internet documents, did not exist, and Mosaic was in early development. Now, the World-Wide Web and browsers have become the preferred means of accessing information and services on the Net. FTP servers remain, but the commands that make them work, and the workings themselves, are hidden by browsers. Gopher servers, so prevalent as document retrieval mechanisms only a few years ago, have largely been supplanted by Web servers.

MTO has evolved with Net technology. We established a Web server in January, 1995 (MTO 1.1) and began offering documents in both non-graphical plain-text (ASCII) and hypertext formats (HTML), the latter integrating text, graphics, and sound. We have continued to provide plain-text documents of all items, and have maintained mto-serv, our plain-text FileServer, a Gopher and anonymous FTP site for those who do not have the necessary equipment to use the graphically-oriented Web, or who prefer to retrieve MTO in plain-text format.

Providing MTO in two formats has always required a bit more work for the small staff, but we accepted that burden in order to ensure that anyone with even the most basic Internet service--an email account--would have access to MTO. Now that the journal has expanded in content with the new Music Theory International department (see below), Advertisements, a New Book section (and perhaps yet another to be announced in MTO 2.7!), the burden of producing each issue of MTO in two formats has grown substantially. We are therefore considering the possibility of offering MTO as a Web-only publication, that is, in HTML format only. Plain-text versions of MTO items would no longer be made available (except for the table of contents, which would still be distributed by email). The burden of providing two versions of all items would be eliminated, shifting some responsibility to our subscribers, who would need to begin using a Web browser in order to read MTO. Those who have sufficient hardware resources would probably want to get and learn to use one of the graphical Web browsers. Those who lack the resources would need to ask the system administrator of their Internet host to install a non-graphical (plain-text) browser such as Lynx.

Lynx is very easy to use and is available on most hosts. Those who have relied on mto-serv and email to retrieve and read MTO items may be surprised to discover that they can, in fact, read MTO on the Web by typing "lynx http://societymusictheory.org/mto/index.html" at an Internet host's system prompt (and then hitting ENTER). Because Lynx is a non-graphical browser, it can be used with even the most basic terminal emulations (e.g. VT100). Lynx does not display images but does allow users to transfer image files to their Internet hosts, from which the files can then be downloaded to a home computer and viewed offline with a graphics monitor and appropriate software. Robert Judd, MTO Manager, wrote a guide to Web tools in volume 1.3. Subscribers may want to consult that guide in considering the best way to access the Web.

The reader survey distributed last week was designed to help us gauge the readiness and willingness of our subscribers to move to a Web-only MTO. If you have not yet filled it out and sent it in, please do so as soon as possible. The survey is included below in case you cannot find yours. Copy the survey into an email message, fill it in, and send it to mto-survey@societymusictheory.org. We hope to have a high response rate so that we know how to proceed.


Music Theory Online

Reader Survey

The MTO editors would be grateful if you would take a moment to reply to this request for information. Our goal is to provide the most effective and useful service we can, while conserving resources as far as possible. Please send your reply to mto-survey@societymusictheory.org. Do not send it to mto-list@societymusictheory.org. 1. MTO ACCESS a) Do you access MTO via e-mail, gopher, ftp, or the Web? b) Do you normally download/print or do you read online? c) How would you react to eliminating ascii versions of MTO? 2. LYNX a) Are you aware of Lynx Web access at your internet host? b) Have you used Lynx satisfactorily or not? c) How would you feel about switching to Lynx for a Web-only MTO? 2. MTO SERVICES a) What MTO services do you find particularly valuable? b) Are there services you believe could be eliminated? c) Do you know of services we don't provide that ought to be considered? 3. MECHANICS AND CONTENT a) Do you have other comments as to the mechanics or content of MTO? b) Can you suggest improvements to mto-talk? Thanks in advance for taking the time to reply. A report on the responses will appear our next issue (2.7, November 1996).

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3. Music Theory International

MTO 2.5 introduced a new section, MTO Correspondents, for reports on music theory activities around the world. Our first report was by Peter Castine (Berlin, Germany). In the Editor's Message for 2.5, and in the table of contents, I mistakenly labeled the new section "MTO Correspondents," when in the August SMT Newsletter (Volume 19, Number 2, 1996) I identified the new section as Music Theory International, which from now on will be the title. Since our last issue, we have added two new Correspondents, Roberto A. Saltini (Brazil), and Gerold W. Gruber (Austria). A full listing of the Correspondents appears in the MTO masthead. They are as follows:

Per Broman, Sweden
Peter Castine, Germany
Wai-ling Cheong, Hong Kong
Geoffrey Chew, England
Gerold W. Gruber, Austria
Henry Klumpenhouwer, Canada
Nicolas Meeus, Belgium, France
Ken-ichi Sakakibara, Japan
Roberto A. Saltini, Brazil
Michiel Schuijer, Holland
Uwe Seifert, Germany
Arvid Vollsnes, Norway

Per F. Broman submitted a report for this issue on three seminars that took place in connection with the 1996 ISCM World Music Days (Copenhagen).

If you live in a country not yet represented, please contact me at the address below if you are interested in serving as a Correspondent, or if you would like to suggest someone.

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4. MTO Hypertext Subscriber Directory

A plain-text alphabetical directory of MTO subscribers has been available on our home page for some time. The present and future directories will be in hypertext format, where each email address is a hot link. If your WWW browser supports "mailto" links, clicking on the address in the new directory will bring up an email screen with the address of the selected link already filled in. Check out the directory at http://societymusictheory.org/mto/docs/mto-dir.html. We hope subscribers will find this new directory useful. An updated copy will appear at the beginning of each month.

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5. Subscriber Services

When you go on vacation, you should postpone your MTO and mto-talk mail. If your email address changes, you must change your subscription address for both MTO (= mto-list) and mto-talk. These and other options can be set by filling in and submitting a Web form. Point your browser at the MTO home page and follow the link for "Subscriber Services" in the menu near the top of the page. It is much easier, and more reliable, to set subscriber options by submitting the Web form than by submitting email requests to "listproc," our mailing list software. Please report any problems with the Web form to me.

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6. Auto-responder Addresses: Instant Documentation by Email

Subscribers should be aware that they can receive documentation and short help documents by sending an empty email message to one of several "auto-responder" addresses:

Send suggestions for further auto-responder addresses to me.

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Lee A. Rothfarb, General Editor
Music Theory Online
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-6070
U.S.A.
mto-editor@societymusictheory.org
voice: (805) 893-7527 (with voice mail)
fax: (805) 893-7194