On Tue, 1 Jul 2003, Phil Taylor wrote: > Over the past year or so, this group has become > dominated by discussion of abcm2ps;
Probably because it is the best and least "limited" ABC implementation around: it implements an extensive set of features, is actively developed, runs on all computer platforms that we use and gives excellent ouput quality! > So, if we are going to hand over the development of > the standard to one person, No one suggested that just 1 person should do all of the work. > He is going to be familiar with programs which do > fast onscreen display of abc music, programs which > play abc, programs which do musical analysis or use > abc for archival or database purposes etc. Phil, this are all implementation specific issues which a standard should not address. As you indicated yourself, ABC is just an *abstract* computer representation of a computer score; all that the standard should do is to define this representation in an abstract way. Whether the *concrete* ABC files are to be played, displayed, printed or analyzed is up to the end user. What the internal data format of the handling program should be, is up to the software developer and depends on the task at hand. As several software developers already indicated, no major software package will consider to import or export ABC unless there exists a clear, well-defined and uptodate ABC standard. As such, I think we are by far better off with a possibly sub-optimal standard than with no standard at all! No standard can make all users or developers happy at the same time; no one can oblige all software developers to implement the standard. All we can do as an user group is to define a clear standard for those users and developers that feel a need for it and are willing to comply. To make sure that this will work out, we need a couple of "leaders" who make the final decisions based on input from this e-mail group. As I already stated, possibly sub-optimal decisions are better than no decisions at all! So, Jef and Guido, what do you think? Are you willing to discuss your ideas with us? Groeten, Irwin Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~* To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
