I. Oppenheim writes:
| On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, Jeremy Cowgar wrote:
|
| > but is it possible to create an optional breath mark? (') ... paren's
| > around it?
|
| Unfortunately, this seems not to be possible with
| standard ABC. Either you could write some Postscript to
| define your own special symbol, or you could use a
| different symbol instead, like +plus+ to designate
| optional breaths.
Well, what I've done in the few cases that I want this is to "abuse"
the chord notation. Here's a somewhat weird test "tune" in my
abc-test collection, that uses both chord and ! notation, and should
maybe be upgraded to use the + notation:
X: 1
T: TEST: Breath mark
N: Done by "abusing" the chord notation.
%%staffwidth 300
M: 6/8
L: 1/8
K: C
[| CDE "(,)"yFGA ","yBc2 | "//"ycBA "(')"yGFE "'"yDC2 |]
%
[| CDE !(,)!yFGA !,!yBc2 | !//!ycBA !(')!yGFE !'!yDC2 |]
I've tested this with the original abc2ps and my (jcabc2ps) clone,
and the first staff produces exactly what I'd expect. The abc2ps that
I have doesn't understand the ! notation.
The real problem with abusing the chord notation like this is that
you can't do that and also use chords. But for a breath mark, it
probably doesn't matter, because with breath marks you usually want
the small space that the y pseudo-rest gives, and this doesn't
interfere with attaching a chord to the following note. And I think
that I should replace y with y/ throughout, because the space is a
bit wider than it needs to be.
(I wonder how many abc tools understand the x and y "rests"?)
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