Re: [abcusers] this tune intentionally left blank

[John Chambers]

Phil Taylor writes:
| On 7 Jun 2004, at 08:46, Paulo Eleut=E9rio Tib=FArcio wrote:
| > Em Qua 02 Jun 2004 12:47, John Chambers escreveu:
| >> Jack Campin writes:
| > [snip]
| >> | > The  problem  is how best to say this.
| >> | > There  is a list of headers that could contain a code for "no
| >> | > notes". This field already uses a double quote to indicate that
| >> | > accompaniment chords are present. I wonder if there's a good
| >> | > single char that could stand for "notes", or maybe for "no
| >> | > notes"?  Perhaps  '*'  (asterisk) could be used for this, as it
| >> | > doesn't seem to have any other use, and it is conventionally
| >> | > used to indicate an explanatory  footnote.
| >> |
| >> | That sounds pretty good.
| >>
| >> Maybe I'll try implementing it.
| >>
| > I don't think that would be a good idea.  IMHO any characters that
| > might still be available should be reserved to signal new, more
| > productive contexts.  ...

This was a total misunderstanding of what I  was  talking  about.   I
wasn't suggesting any new ABC syntax.  The question was how to get my
Tune Finder to indicate to a user that  an  ABC  "tune"  contains  no
notes.  The problem there is that the Tune Finder's output is getting
to be rather wide, making for problems using it on  a  small  screen.
Adding a wordy comment would make this problem worse.

| Why not just use a "tune" which consists of a single barline?  That is
| actually a minimal legal tune.  BarFly will display an empty staff, with
| title, composer clef and metre.  (Otherwise you get an error message
| which says "No tune".)  Not sure what other parsers will do.

One  problem  I  can  see  is  getting  people  to  follow  any  such
suggestion.  The canonical example is the fact that we can't even get
people to include an "X:" line at the start of tunes, although  ABC's
syntax  has  required it from the early days.  Getting people to type
some code to indicate that there aren't any  notes  would  be  rather
hopeless, I'd guess.  Most people would consider it as silly as those
"This page intentionally left blank" notices.  ("But  it's  obviously
not blank." ;-)

I do often include a few lines containing just a bar line  for  tunes
that  I  don't  have  the notes for.  With abc2ps, this gets me a few
staff lines when I try printing it, which is convenient  for  writing
in notes. But this is just my own occasional practice. I'd think what
we'd want software to do is flag noteless tunes with a  warning,  but
process them anyway. Tune info without notes can be useful, as we can
see by the popularity of Andrew Kuntz's Fiddler's Companion site. And
having this info in the form of ABC headers can be useful, especially
if you're the sort that likes to write little  scripts  that  combine
files in interesting ways.

I also have a few "tunes" that contain "W:" lines but no notes.  With
abc2ps,  this  gets  you  the  usual  sort of output that has titles,
notes, history, etc, plus the lyrics.  In fact, I have a little  perl
script  that  strips  out  the  notes from a tune, leaving behind the
headers and lyrics.  I don't use it much, but when I want that  done,
it's nice to have software that does it right.

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