>> There are lots of abc2win files on the net which use the exclamation
>> mark for a different purpose
> Can you be specific there? As a developer I'd like to know!
It's a line terminator. In ABC2Win, it's the only way to start
a new line of staff notation at a user-defined point, which is
unfortunately non-standard. But having a line terminator is a
great help in resolving the conflict between making ABC source-
readable and having it generate readable staff notation.
[warning, if you are not using a fixed-width
font, what follows will be incomprehensible]
Consider this, from the Aird volume 1 transcription on my website,
laid out for optimal source readbility:
X:34
T:Thro' the Lang Muir.
T:Wandering Willie
M:6/8
L:1/8
K:EMin % dorian/minor/phrygian pentatonic
Bee Te2d |ege dBG|Bee Te2d |BAG E3:|
BGG G>AG|BAG ABd|BAG G>AG|ABG E3 |
BAG GAG |BAG ABd|Bee e2d |BAG E3|]
As it stands, four bars to a staff line is too little. What I'd
like is to put the tune on two six-bar lines. BarFly unfortunately
doesn't use ! the way ABC2Win does, so I have to write this:
X:34
T:Thro' the Lang Muir.
T:Wandering Willie
M:6/8
L:1/8
K:EMin % dorian/minor/phrygian pentatonic
Bee Te2d |ege dBG|Bee Te2d |BAG E3:|\
BGG G>AG|BAG ABd|
BAG G>AG|ABG E3 |\
BAG GAG |BAG ABd|Bee e2d |BAG E3|]
Even though I've managed to keep parallel
phrases vertically
aligned so
beats fall in the same column, the extraneous,
musically meaningless line
breaks destroy the visual
flow,
and are a serious
impediment to readability of the
source in
a large score. What I
would like to write is this:
X:34
T:Thro' the Lang Muir.
T:Wandering Willie
M:6/8
L:1/8
K:EMin % dorian/minor/phrygian pentatonic
Bee Te2d |ege dBG| Bee Te2d |BAG E3:|\
BGG G>AG|BAG ABd|!BAG G>AG|ABG E3 |\
BAG GAG |BAG ABd| Bee e2d |BAG E3:|
which resolves the conflict in the simplest way I can imagine.
: It seems to me that in some cases, having the !...! in the
: abc is better than defining a single-char symbol.
[the reason offered for this being]
: Now, people who think that abc should always be translated
: to staff notation might wonder who would ever read abc
: directly. But there are, in fact, people who do this.
In practice ABCs intended for processing by abcm2ps are among the
least source-readable on the net, and the proliferation of long
words enclosed by !...! is one the main contributing factors. It
makes formatting to show structural parallelisms in the music (as
I've done above) impossible.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack> * food intolerance data & recipes,
Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM "Embro, Embro".
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