On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 10:51:40PM +0100, Barry Say wrote: > I am concerned about the lack of backwards compatibility of the proposed standard > with abc2mtex. > Since this was the original program for ABC, I think these issues deserve some > consideration. > > 2. This version of the standard has gone overboard in specifying %% type > directives. As I > understand it, this is a postscript notation.
No, it's TeX :) All these are based on the fact that ABC uses % as a comment - which is TeX, via Chris W, for obvious reasons. All these %%whatever usages are based on the point that the first character makes it a comment, and thus anything behind that will be ignored by any ABC application unless it takes the trouble specifically to look for it. Though I agree with your "overboard" in the sense that, as I say elsewhere, this ad-hoc proliferation is likely to leave us with problems later. > In abc2mtex, lines starting with "\" were used to pass information directly to the > typesetting level. > These must be allowed in the new standard This is a good observation. I didn't even remember TeX when there was all the discussion of backslashes. Though I did notice that we seem to have strayed from the TeX special characters, as well, there would need to be a little translation layer before all of these newlydefined ones would get printed via TeX. I particularly notice the comment in Irwin's abc-drafts, that Chris's original abc examples will need to be edited to conform to the standard. In fact, abc as it is currently being written is increasingly unlikely to go thrugh abc2mtex, and abc written for that is not likely to go through anything written to conform to this draft. More on this elsewhere. One untested thought - is abc2ly and lilypond a possibility for you ? It at any rate keeps the TeXness that other abc apps don't. But I've never used it in anger, just a thought. Another thought. I suspect several of the people here will never have used abc2mtex, or TeX, and won't "see the point" unless you show some examples of what you're doing with it that no other app. can do instead. -- Richard Robinson "The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
