Thanks for the response! Armed with that, I finally got a chance to try
this and get it working, with very nice results.
Actually, what I ended up with was 3.6 and shrinking the font ever so
slightly. 3.5 put the baseline of the numbers on the staffline, and I
wanted a tiny bit of whitespace between the numbers and the stafflines
themselves.
I had to modify tab.fmt for the font change, however. It might be nice to
have that be overridable. I basically changed the line:
postscript /tab{tab_nstr .5 sub add M /Helvetica-Bold 7.5 selectfont showc}!
...to two lines which do the same thing (I believe):
postscript /tab_font{/Helvetica-Bold 7.5}!
postscript /tab{tab_nstr .5 sub add M tab_font selectfont showc}!
...and that allows me to override tab_font in my files. I named the
resulting file mdtab.fmt, but maybe you'd be willing to change yours to
match? I'd love for there to be just a single tab format file for abcm2ps
out there.
(BTW -- to the other posters who suggested abctab2ps and jaabc2ps -- both
are good programs I was aware of, but I couldn't figure out any way to get
the same basic flexibility and appearance that Hudson's tab.fmt and abcm2ps
gave me, although with a bit more pain in making the files...)
A note to anyone else reading this in the archives who wants to try this for
Mountain Dulcimer tab or Mandolin tab (which it's equally well suited for)
-- all of what we're talking about here requires abcm2ps 4.x -- it's not in
the 3.x versions.
And for those same people -- here's a tune in it's entirety (done from
memory) as a sample starting point. (If Hudson changed his tab.fmt file,
then you'll need to change the first line to use that again...).
-->Steve Bennett
===============
%%format mdtab.fmt
%%deco A 4 tab 6 0 0 A
%%deco D 4 tab 6 0 0 D
%%deco dd 4 tab 6 0 0 dd
X:1
T:Boil them cabbage down
M:4/4
L:1/4
M:none
K:none
V:1 clef=treble up
[K:D][M:4/4]\
FFFF | G2 G2 | FFFF | E4 |
s: "D" | "G" | "D" | "A" |
w: boil them cab-bage down, boys, boil them cab-bage down
FFFF | GGGG | FFEE | D4 :|
s: "D" | "G" | "D" " " "A" | "D" |
w: on-ly song that I can sing is boil them cab-bage down
V:2 clef=none stafflines=4 staffscale=1.8
%%postscript 3.6 tab_cordas
%%postscript /tab_font{/Helvetica-Bold 6.0}!
!D! !A! !dd! y\
!a! !a! !c! x !a! !a! !c! x !a! !a! !c! x !a! !a! !c! x |\
!a! !b! !d! x2 !a! !b! !d! x2 |\
!a! !a! !c! x !a! !a! !c! x !a! !a! !c! x !a! !a! !c! x |\
!b! !a! !b! x4 |
!D! !A! !dd! y\
!a! !a! !c! x !a! !a! !c! x !a! !a! !c! x !a! !a! !c! x |\
!a! !b! !d! x !a! !b! !d! x !a! !b! !d! x !a! !b! !d! x |\
!a! !a! !c! x !a! !a! !c! x !b! !a! !b! x !b! !a! !b! x |\
!a! !a! !a! x4 :|
================
On 11/8/05 11:50 AM, "Hudson Lacerda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Steven Bennett escreveu:
>> Wow. I had no idea you could do that stuff in abcm2ps. It's perfect timing
>> too -- I've been recently looking for some way to do Mountain Dulcimer tab,
>> and your Guitar tab stuff gives me a starting point for nearly everything I
>> need.
>>
>> In fact, the only real change I need to make is to reduce to three strings
>> (4 staff lines) and figure out how to put the numbers *between* the lines
>> instead of on them and I should be set...
>>
>> Thanks,
>> -->Steve Bennett
>
> Set the "number of strings" (tab_cordas arg.) to a fractional value
> worked fine here (4.5; maybe would you prefer 3.5?):
>
> %%format tab.fmt
>
> X:2
> M:none
> K:none
> V:1 clef=perc stafflines=4 staffscale=1.5
> %%postscript 4.5 tab_cordas
> !a! !b! !&! !c! x\
> !c! !d! !&! !c! x\
> !a! !&! !a! !b! x\
> !c! !b! !&! !a! x\
> !&! !&! !&! !a! x
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