Choral Public Domain Library

I've been looking at the many unindexed Guerrero pieces at Nacho's website, wondering whether to make text pages with external links or submit add work forms, but there's a more basic question on my mind: who uses cpdl numbers, and what for, exactly? This seems to bear on whether a new transposition counts as an "edition", and I see that separately available movements as well as instrumental parts sometimes do and sometimes don't have new numbers assigned. Has any guidance already been posted somewhere? If these numbers don't serve any useful purpose, are we unnecessarily complicating the submission process?

I'm sorry having to understand today that "number" has both meanings in English: "CPDL number": one for each edition and "edition number" as an answer to "How many new editions today?".
So, "How many new editions this year?" is more meanful than "How many new work pages this year". To count editions, we need a (different) number for each one, avoiding duplicates or editions without content. What is an edition? A group of links to a score plus, eventually, to a sound and a source file. In some cases, we also find a basso continuo score, orchestral parts, etc. Let them be grouped under the same CPDL number as leading to the same piece of music (same movement of a work or same editor for one work). Edition numbers are useful to nobody, except for those concerned by consistency of databases, more than works pages ("larger works", "collections" "publications", etc.) and perhaps less than links (broken or not, internal or external) which lead us to the real resources.

I guess nombre = number, count or quantity, chiffre = figure (this can mean count as well!) or numeral, numéro = identification number. So one distinguishes between "number of editions" and "edition number".

I'm all for consistency too, and agree with your guideline for counting 'editions' rather than files. But it's more a slope than a sharp line, isn't it? One edition can be available in different clefs; when a transposition is offered I think that's primarily a performance decision but it's an 'editorial' decision of sorts. If I make an edition with two kinds of text underlay (Franco-Flemish vs. accented Italianate Latin) does that count as two? James Gibb has energetically made corrected versions of many cpdl scores: when these supplant the 'original' should we be counting twice?

Good issue to ponder. Error correction should supplant the prior edition using the same CPDL number IMO. I defer to others on the more complicated aspects.

I had a look at http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Mess ... usic_files today (but carefully avoided comparing the piano reduction to a copyrighted edition). There are some notes that apply to the whole edition rather than individual movements: would reformatting thus be feasible, or would it be less cumbersome to consolidate under one edition number?

CPDL #18541-5: Kyrie ( 8 pages): Icon_pdf.gif Icon_snd.gif; Gloria: Icon_pdf.gif Icon_snd.gif; &c……..
Editor: Claude Tallet (submitted 2008-12-14). Score information: A4, 43 pages, 149 kB Copyright: CPDL
Edition notes: Inégales rewritten as dotted rhythms

CPDL #24977: Kyrie (5 pages) Icon_pdf.gif Icon_snd.gif Capella; CPDL #24984:Gloria: (7 pages) Icon_pdf.gif Icon_snd.gif Capella ……...
Editor: James Gibb (submitted 2011-11-22). Score information: A4, N pages in total, 91 kB Copyright: CPDL
Edition notes: Reformatting of #18541-5.