extend meaning of missing `<ending>` element text

[lemzwerg]

The current description of the <ending> element in https://www.w3.org/2021/06/musicxml40/musicxml-reference/elements/ending/ contains the following.

The element text is used when the text displayed in the ending is different than what appears in the number attribute.

I'm not sure whether this text covers what was really intended. As it is formulated, <ending number=1,2,3/> results in something like this, for example.

IMHO, this isn't useful because repeat numbers are never shown without a full stop after the number, AFAIK.

I thus suggest to change the text to something like the following.

If the element text is specified, display it as the text for the volta
number.  If it is missing, an application-specific result should be
displayed based on the number attribute.

An application could then display one of the following possibilities.

There are many places in the specification where application-specific default values are used, and I think it would make sense to allow this here, too.

[mscuthbert]

Werner -- there are far too many encoders/readers that depend on the current spec. If you'd like to have an additional feature, please propose it as something to add to the spec. We are not going to change the meaning of long established fields.

[lemzwerg]

Well, this issue is exactly that, namely to extend the meaning of the <ending> element without a text (see the title). It is not a bug report (and sorry for not mentioning that fact explicitly; I thought it was clear from the description). Too bad that reporters can't set issue labels in this tracker by themselves...

AFAICS, such an extension would be fully backward compatible – no application would be forced to handle the <ending> element differently, and the result would be exactly the same. Only the current condition that the number attribute text has to be used verbatim if there is no element text would be relaxed.