John Walsh writes: | Bryan Creer writes: | | >Well, it didn't take much figuring since that is what I stated explicitly but | >it is the public aspect of abc that I was referring to. I'm not sure why you | >consider this mislistthropic.
That's a great word. | This brings up a problem I've noticed in some of the abc2ps | clones, tho it's probably more general: some of the characters H--Z are | permanently bound to notation---J to a slide, H to a fermata, S to a | segno, P to a pralltriller... (The first three don't bother me, since I | use the same characters for the same things, but the fourth does, since I | don't.) According to the standard, these characters are supposed to be | free, but they are rapidly being taken up. I have no real quarrel with | this---I use most of the characters the same way myself, and I'm glad for | the extra notation---*as long as there is a way to turn it off*. (!) Or | even better, to redefine the binding. It could be an entry in the fmt | file, for instance. In other applications, it could be in preferences. | Or...it could even be a formal part of abc... Well, as one of the culprits who cloned abc2ps, I've been thinking about this problem, too. We've had a few discussions around the topic in the past. Maybe it's time for another one. I'm seriously considering implementing at least the simplest "macro" case, i.e., the string substituion. A bit of digging around in the list's archives turned up a number of different proposals for the syntax. It'd be useful if we could get some sort of agreement on what the simple case looks like. As I (sorta) understand the suggestions, they amount to defining a list of standard musical terms, possibly in the !...! form. This would give us a list of things like !fermata!, !mf!, !sfz!, !trill!, !roll!, and so on. These could be used, but the result would be cluttered and not very readable. So then we define the macros as something like: m: T !trill! m: ~ !roll! m: H !fermata! and then the letter T stands for a trill. With abc2ps, this would be one of the default definitions, since these symbols are currently what is hard-coded for these ornaments. Implementing this as a pass before parsing a line would be simple. I could have just sat down and done it. But I thought maybe it would be useful to get the usual flame war started, to see whether there's any consensus on exactly what the syntax should be. I have noticed that some people object to the !...! notation, while others seem to think it's a clever idea. I mostly view it as not ideal but usable. It is in minimal conflict with abc2win's use of !, but I've found experimentally that it's not hard to separate the two. The jcabc2ps behind my tune finder does this, and it seems fairly successful. It also accepts the !...! notation, but treats it as a variant of "...", though the positioning isn't all that great yet. There's also the more general topic of parameterized macros, but that seems to be a discussion killer. I'd have to admit that the previous discussions of the topic have rapidly lost me. There isn't the slightest chance that I could implement them from the descriptions that I've read. So I intend to "file" any replies that wander off in this direction, and read only the ones that deal with the simple case. If we could get that working, a lot of users would applaud ... To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
