Staff-based MEIs encode every staff in its own<staff> tag. This is actuallyincorrect as in MEI this tag is used to represent unrelated parts of music, sousing them to represent separate staves on a page is incorrect.Instead the system begin tag (<sb>) needs to be used to mark where inonlyone staff element a new staff would begin.

Here is a representation of the same snippet of a syllable split across twostaves in both encoding formats. Using<staff> tags:

<section>    <staffxml:id="group1"facs="zone1"n="1">        <layern="1">            <clefshape="C"line="3" />            <syllablexml:id="first-syllable"precedes="second-syllable">                <neume>                    <ncoct="2"pname="a" />                </neume>            </syllable>            <custosoct="2"pname="b" />        </layer>    </staff>    <staffxml:id="group2"facs="zone2"n="2">        <layern="1">            <syllablexml:id="second-syllable"follows="first-syllable">                <neume>                    <ncoct="2"pname="b" />                </neume>            </syllable>        </layer>    </staff></section>

And using<sb> tags:

<section>    <staffn="1">        <layern="1">            <sbxml:id="group1"facs="zone1" />            <clefshape="C"line="3" />            <syllable>                <neume>                    <ncoct="2"pname="a" />                </neume>                <sbxml:id="group2"facs="zone2">                    <custosoct="2"pname="b" />                </sb>                <neume>                    <ncoct="2"pname="b" />                </neume>            </syllable>        </layer>    </staff></section>

When using the<sb> tags, the staff always starts with a<sb> tag withthe @facs attribute. This maps to a zone for the first staff in thefacsimile. Each following<sb> tag corresponds to each following staff,with each having a @facs attribute pointing to the zone for that staff.

The system begin tag can appear either as a milestone element or containa custos. The system begin tag can appear at the layer level or within a<syllable> element. Putting a custos inside the<sb> tag allows fora custos to exist even when the syllable continues onto the next staff.

In the<staff>-based format, the @precedes and @follows attributes onthe<syllable> tags are used to represent that logically this is asingle syllable but are represented as separate elements. Technically only@follows is necessary for Neon to convert it to<sb>-based, but Neonneeds both attributes to properly recognize split syllables.