Re: [abcusers] developers/users
Phil: The only responsibility I acknowledge towards the users is to make sure that it won't do them any harm (carry viruses, corrupt their operating system etc). Bryan: Well giving them software that produces "abc" that is inconsistent with any other abc isn't exactly doing them favours is it? Me: But that's what market forces are all about. It's the customer's job to decide how many favours and how many disfavours the software bestows. If their whims differ too much from the developers then they won't use it. If enough of them like it then eventually the world will come round to it. Doing line ends with ! was a mistake, but I think most software now handles it. Laurie To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Stressed note code
Bruce Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED] said "... I've programed in TRUE BASIC an ABC player ... PS: I'm not a developer. ..." I think he must mean he didn't use to be a developer. Laurie. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] developers/users
Bryan: Let's make the standard ABC thing concrete: Given that I can work on at most one of the following, which should I do: 1. Make Muse fully support standard ABC (1.6 or 1.7.6 or whatever). (It's somewhere close but there are gaps and the odd error). 2. Make Muse be able to take input from a piano keyboard and emit ABC? 3. Make Muse properly support hammer-on, string-bending and pull-offs for guitarists. Note: I said *at most* one - I'm not making promises. Laurie P.S. Existing paying customers have repeatedly asked for numbers 2 and 3. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] developers/users
Wil Macaulay says - But any text within double quotes that _does_ start with one of those symbols can be safely used as an annotation, so IT IS NOW POSSIBLE to write an abc file that can be safely played by abc2midi (or BarFly, or Muse) and properly displayed by abc2ps (or BarFly or Muse). I seem to recall that during the debate on the sharps/flats version of the K: command you said - if you write your abc/Noteworthy converter to use a version of abc that is not in the 1.6 standard (I'm not even talking about 1.7 extensions here) you will be creating tunes that are not readable by abc2win, which is the most common abc platform for windows. Bad move. I quite agree. Have you changed that advice? Here's where I really believe that you just "don't get it" - software DOESN'T produce abc, people do. And guns don't kill people or perhaps an analogy closer to home would be "Instruments don't make music, people do." But that doesn't absolve instrument makers from responsibility for the quality of their instruments. Musicians can make better music with better instruments. People will twist it to serve their own needs, if they don't have a good way to do it in the standard, and if those needs are seen as useful to multiple people they will get addressed, eventually. There is a maxim in the commercial computer world that says "Don't start the development until you've finished the design." Since this is almost never observed it is cynically twisted to "Don't finish the development before you've started the design." The latter seems to be policy in the abc community. Phil Taylor says - The problem here lies not with the proposed mechanism, but with the fact that the original (v1.5 abc) guitar chord format permitted abuse, and we can't go back in time and change it retrospectively. I'm afraid he is right. Presumably guitar chords were originally seen as simple text. We are stuck with the results but can't we learn from the experience and try not to make the same sort of mistake again? It sounds as if I won't be able to use Phil's transcription of the Goldberg Variations. Can they really be said to be written in abc rather than in BarFly output code? Bryan To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] developers/users
Laurie Griffiths says - But that's what market forces are all about. It's the customer's job to decide how many favours and how many disfavours the software bestows. Maybe that's why abc2win is so popular. If their whims differ too much from the developers then they won't use it. BarFly has something of a monopoly in the MAC market. Doing line ends with ! was a mistake, but I think most software now handles it. But what about the use of ! as a delimeter in 1.7.6. This needs to be resolved before it is implemented. Bryan To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] V:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Laurie Griffiths asks - Can someone tell me how to access the ABC Users list archive. (Do we have one?) Well, I've heard it mentioned but I don't know how to get at it. I've been offline for a week now (hard disk crash), so I haven't had the chance to participate in the recent discussions, and there's *no* way I'm gonna jump into it at this stage ;) But the abcusers archive is located at: http://iona.tullochgorm.com/abcusers_archive/ Please don't tell any non-subscribers about it. It's not too well updated though. Last posting archived is dated Aug 5th 2000. Frank Nordberg To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] !
On Thu 25 Jan 2001 at 06:43AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But what about the use of ! as a delimeter in 1.7.6. This needs to be resolved before it is implemented. The potential conflict with abc2win code can be resolved fairly easily in the parser by looking forward to see if an ! is at the end of a line or not. James Allwright To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re:[abcusers] !
James Allwright says - The potential conflict with abc2win code can be resolved fairly easily in the parser by looking forward to see if an ! is at the end of a line or not. Not so, I'm afraid. The following is from the abc2win documentation - The exclamation point will force a new staff line when the tune is drawn- you need not necessarily start a new line in the editing window as well. Copyright 1996, 1997 jimvintSystems I've come across many examples of ! within a line of notation. Bryan To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] developers/users
Bryan Creer wrote: It sounds as if I won't be able to use Phil's transcription of the Goldberg Variations. Can they really be said to be written in abc rather than in BarFly output code? A C program which makes use of the Windows API is still written in C, even though the source code won't compile elsewhere. It's just using a set of extensions appropriate to that particular job. I have extended abc to deal with Baroque keyboard music and Gregorian Chant. The extensions are not particularly complex (not compared with the Windows API anyway), so you could implement them if you needed to. If you want to do Gregorian Chant you can use Melody Assistant, which is available for Windows and Mac and incorporates the same Gregorian Chant extensions as BarFly. No other program has yet implemented the macros which are required to deal with Bach's decorations. BarFly has something of a monopoly in the MAC market. There's macabc2mtex (now very old) macabc2ps macmidi2abc Melody Assistant Virtual Composer abc4mac Skink Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Stressed note code
Laurie writes: | Bruce Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED] said | "... I've programed in TRUE BASIC an ABC player | ... | PS: I'm not a developer. ..." | | I think he must mean he didn't use to be a developer. Sure 'nuf. And now Bruce is part of the cabal that's inflicting its own ideas about ABC on the poor, oppressed user community. The intonation ideas certainly sound interesting and useful, as well as being definitely not part of the ABC standard in any sense. So it seems that Bruce is definitely part of the cabal. He got there by the usual route of writing some software that reads ABC notation and does something with it that he personally finds useful. Then he offered it for free to anyone who was interested. So now he will be subject to all the usual criticism for hist dictatorial infliction of useful software on users who weren't consulted about it beforehand. I wonder what other sorts of evil extensions his player implements? Maybe we can find out and secretly implement incompatible extensions in other players. There are several sorts of microtone notations that different groups of musicians have developed; this may be a good starting point. Maybe we should tell Bruce about the secret handshake ... To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Polyrhythmic music
At 12:19 AM 24-01-01 -0800, John Walsh wrote: X:7 T:Polyrhythmic with No Coherent Bar Division Z:The notes line up, but the bars don't B:MusiXTeX doc p 47 M:3/4 L:1/8 K:C V:1 F2 F2 F2|F2 F2 F2||F2 F2 F2|F2 F2 F2:| V:2 M:2/4 F2 F2|F2 F2|F2 F2||F2 F2|F2 F2|F2 F2:| V:3 M:3/8 L:1/8 F3|FFF|F3|FFF|F3|FFF||F3|FFF|F3|FFF|F3|FFF:| This is exactly the reverse of how I expected polyrhythmic music to work. I was thinking that the bars would line up but the notes wouldn't - i.e. a bar of 4/4 would last the same time as a bar of 3/4 (which means the length of a crotchet in the 3/4 bar is 4/3 the length of a crotchet in the 4/4 bar). So, are both options used in polyrhythmic music or am I completely mistaken in my assumptions? Bob -- -- Bob Archer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] developers/users
I wrote: There's macabc2mtex (now very old) macabc2ps macmidi2abc Melody Assistant Virtual Composer abc4mac Skink Oops, forgot the one which I ported myself - James's yaps. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] developers/users
Well giving them software that produces "abc" that is inconsistent with any other abc isn't exactly doing them favours is it? BarFly doesn't produce ABC, the user does. It's a text editor that *can* create ABC but doesn't impose any structure at all on the documents it produces. Thank God. I'd find any other model useless. === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] developers/user
John Chambers says - And now Bruce is part of the cabal that's inflicting its own ideas about ABC on the poor, oppressed user community. Maybe that's what he was trying to distance himself from. So now he will be subject to all the usual criticism for hist dictatorial infliction of useful software on users who weren't consulted about it beforehand. Well he has co-opted the J: command. I hope nobody had any plans for that. On the other hand, he has introduced a sharps and flats key signature so presumably "We who like it the way it is" will be down on him like a ton of bricks. Maybe we should tell Bruce about the secret handshake ... When I launched abccheck, Phil Taylor told me that since I was now a developer I was entitled to vote. Can I have the handshake as well? Wil Macaulay says - If you are using abc as an output format, you are well advised to use a lowest-common-denominator form. Anybody else care to comment? Should we stop the production of $50 guitars because they don't sound as good? YES!! But seriously, are you saying that because you're doing it for free you don't take pride in the quality of your work? If you are doing it for the love of it, the result should be better than commercial mass production. I can honestly say that if I didn't see some programming issues that I don't know how to solve right away, I wouldn't be doing this. So routine but dull things that might actually be useful don't get done? Thanks for the advice Will; that's what I'm doing, or would be if I wasn't wasting time arguing with people who seem to disagree with everything I say on principle. In the meantime, I'd like to use Voices; which of the incompatible versions of the V: command should I use? I'd like to be able to process chords; how can I reliably recognise whether something between double quotes is a chord or not? (Absence of ^_ or @ isn't enough.) How can I use the !symbol! notation when it clashes with abc2win's use of ! ? All I'm asking for is a more cooperative approach, for developers to take a bit more notice of what other developers are doing and to take a bit more interest in what the non-programming user wants. Are you really arguing against that? Enough. I've got work to do. Bryan (Hmmm. Perhaps if I came out in favour of one of the V: formats.. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] unsuscribing
"b.sallows" wrote: I'm trying to unsubscribe from the abcusers group for a while but keep getting a server error. Can anyone help please/ Brian Sallows To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html Send admin requests to me directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED], or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Toby To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Developers responsibilities
On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 03:32:46PM -0600, John Henckel wrote: In my opinion, the fault lies mostly with Chris Walshaw. Where is that guy anyway?? I haven't seen any comment from Chris since last August. I would gladly update the ABC draft myself. However, I do not have write access to http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/abc-draft.txt. How about it Chris? Are you the "chairman" of this standard or not? If so, please do something, or else appoint someone who will. In particular, you should either put the V: into the draft as proposed by Jean-Francois Moine or else tell us why you don't like it. Also, I would like to know when you plan to close the draft. IMO most people here are more interested in music than they are in defining a standard, so lets get it behind us. Mea culpa. I agree - I too am more interested in music (and my work) than defining the standard and both of those have been going rather well recently. John Atchley has volunteered to update the standard in what seems to me to be a reasonably fair way (involving discussion on abcusers about any changes) and I have accepted his offer. I hope this will move things along now. Regards, Chris Walshaw To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
RE: [abcusers] Stressed note code
There seems to be a whole heap of tongue in cheek going around these days. One individual mentioned using API calls from a BASIC program. Is anyone aware of source code examples that I could look at? (pointers and I simply do not get along and I have long declared them the winner over me) "Richard L Walker"[EMAIL PROTECTED] Pensacola, FL 32504-7726 USA -Original Message- From: John Chambers [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 9:19 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [abcusers] Stressed note code ...Sure 'nuf. And now Bruce is part of the cabal that's inflicting its own ideas about ABC on the poor, oppressed user community... Laurie writes: | Bruce Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED] said | "... I've programed in TRUE BASIC an ABC player | ... | PS: I'm not a developer. ..." | | I think he must mean he didn't use to be a developer. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] developers/user
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John Chambers says - And now Bruce is part of the cabal that's inflicting its own ideas about ABC on the poor, oppressed user community. Maybe that's what he was trying to distance himself from. So now he will be subject to all the usual criticism for hist dictatorial infliction of useful software on users who weren't consulted about it beforehand. Well he has co-opted the J: command. I hope nobody had any plans for that. On the other hand, he has introduced a sharps and flats key signature so presumably "We who like it the way it is" will be down on him like a ton of bricks. Until Chris Walshaw (or representative authorized by him) complains it will remain J: Bruce Olson Old English, Irish and, Scots: popular songs, tunes, broadside ballads at my website (no advs-spam, etc)- www.erols.com/olsonw or click below A href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw" Click /a To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] !
But what about the use of ! as a delimeter in 1.7.6. The potential conflict with abc2win code can be resolved fairly easily in the parser by looking forward to see if an ! is at the end of a line or not. Yes, but what does abc2win do with an exclamation mark in the middle of a line? From what other people are saying it seems like it does the sensible thing. BarFly needs ! too. You can presumably use it to detect when a line has been completed without there being a barline at the end. Which would make those of us who want to write open-ended lines very happy. It would also make me happy because using ! in mid-line helps me resolve the conflict between writing ABC in a manner optimized for source readability and having it laid out sensibly on the printed page. Obviously not many people yet care about having their source readable, but as ABC matures there are going to be an increasing number of people for whom it is their first musical notation - like blind users - and the kind of ABC they're going to want to use is the legibly-laid-out variety. I fail to see the necessity for any more text delimiters in the music. Me too. This !...! syntax is a disaster waiting to happen because of its incompatibility with abc2win and needs to be stepped on before it spreads. === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] developers/user
Wil Macaulay wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John Chambers says - And now Bruce is part of the cabal that's inflicting its own ideas about ABC on the poor, oppressed user community. Maybe that's what he was trying to distance himself from. So now he will be subject to all the usual criticism for hist dictatorial infliction of useful software on users who weren't consulted about it beforehand. Well he has co-opted the J: command. I hope nobody had any plans for that. On the other hand, he has introduced a sharps and flats key signature so presumably "We who like it the way it is" will be down on him like a ton of bricks. Far from it. Just don't take away my K:tonic mode from me - I need it. K:tonic mode? How do you determine if it's correct? 'Sources of Irish Traditional Music', 1998, gives as many as 3 viable scoring modes for some tunes. One is last note as key, and 2 are circular modes, but ABC lets you use 7, most of which are wrong. The problem I have with the K:specification is that it only determines the number of sharps or flats on the key signature, and it isn't required to have any relationship to the real scoring mode and a viable keynote. There is always a keynote for any of the 7 'greek' scoring modes that will give the correct number of sharps or flats. (Seen at a glance from the #/b-key-mode graph SFMODE.GIF on my website. With the first 15 notes on the graph I can get anything from 7 sharps to 7 flats on the key signature with the mode as locrian.) I can score all Western style tunes (conventional ordering of sharps and flats) as locrian, which is fine with ABC, which only cares about the sharps or flats, but that will never give me a viable keynote. Bruce Olson Old English, Irish and, Scots: popular songs, tunes, broadside ballads at my website (no advs-spam, etc)- www.erols.com/olsonw or click below A href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw" Click /a To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
