Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
Alan Ng writes: | At 09:24 PM 2/22/2001 +, John Chambers wrote: | So your server is getting it right, and sending .abc files as type | "text/vnd.abc". | When you say "getting it right," does that mean that you recommend that | servers serve abc files this way? Well, this has been widely recommended for several years, but as you've noticed, it has its problems. As do all the other "solutions". | In fact, quickly surfing through Chris Walshaw's index, I can't find any | other abc sources who serve abc files in a way that John Chambers called | "getting it right" above. You might be impressed by what the search program for my Tune Finder has seen. ABC files are sent in more forms than you might imagine. The most common type is text/plain. Several sites do send the official text/vnd.abc type. Several send application/*, where * has several different values. Several send ABC encoded (usually incorrectly) as HTML. At least two send plain-text ABC but label it as HTML. That one took me a bit of head-scratching to handle correctly. A few are so garbled that I just give up. | OK, now two concrete questions from me: | | 1) So are the world's abc collections all currently presenting their files | as text/plain, and you deprecate this status quo practice? Nope; not hardly. And in practical terms, people can make their web servers send files however they like, and there's nothing much you can do about it. | 2) Given that I would like my new server to behave like everyone else's | server, do you recommend that I ask my sysadmin to remove the MIME type | text/vnd.abc for *.abc files and instead create another MIME type | text/plain for *.abc files? Or how should I best clearly word my request to | a busy sysadmin who cares little about abc and us users of it? Well, making it behave "like everyone else's" is hopeless. If the goal is to make abc usable without any browser configuration, about the only thing that works is to say that .abc files should be sent as text/plain. But this does defeat any attempts by more knowledgeable users to make their browsers recognize ABC and do something musical with them. It forces users to start up ABC software separately, and use cut-and-paste to copy tunes from their browser window to the ABC program's window. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
Alan Ng writes: | At 09:24 PM 2/22/2001 +, John Chambers wrote: | So your server is getting it right, and sending .abc files as type | "text/vnd.abc". | When you say "getting it right," does that mean that you recommend that | servers serve abc files this way? Well, this has been widely recommended for several years, but as you've noticed, it has its problems. As do all the other "solutions". | In fact, quickly surfing through Chris Walshaw's index, I can't find any | other abc sources who serve abc files in a way that John Chambers called | "getting it right" above. You might be impressed by what the search program for my Tune Finder has seen. ABC files are sent in more forms than you might imagine. The most common type is text/plain. Several sites do send the official text/vnd.abc type. Several send application/*, where * has several different values. Several send ABC encoded (usually incorrectly) as HTML. Sometimes the HTML has the text/html type; sometimes it's other things. At least two send plain-text ABC but label it as HTML. That one took me a bit of head-scratching to handle correctly. A few are so garbled that I just give up. | OK, now two concrete questions from me: | | 1) So are the world's abc collections all currently presenting their files | as text/plain, and you deprecate this status quo practice? Nope; not hardly. That's the most common type, but it's nowhere close to universal. In practical terms, people can make their web servers send files however they like, and there's nothing much you can do about it. | 2) Given that I would like my new server to behave like everyone else's | server, do you recommend that I ask my sysadmin to remove the MIME type | text/vnd.abc for *.abc files and instead create another MIME type | text/plain for *.abc files? Or how should I best clearly word my request to | a busy sysadmin who cares little about abc and us users of it? Well, making it behave "like everyone else's" is hopeless. If the goal is to make abc usable without any browser configuration, about the only thing that works is to say that .abc files should be sent as text/plain. But this does defeat any attempts by more knowledgeable users to make their browsers recognize ABC and do something musical with them. It forces users to start up ABC software separately, and use cut-and-paste to copy tunes from their browser window to the ABC program's window. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
Alan Ng writes: | At 09:24 PM 2/22/2001 +, John Chambers wrote: | So your server is getting it right, and sending .abc files as type | "text/vnd.abc". | When you say "getting it right," does that mean that you recommend that | servers serve abc files this way? Well, this has been widely recommended for several years, but as you've noticed, it has its problems. As do all the other "solutions". | In fact, quickly surfing through Chris Walshaw's index, I can't find any | other abc sources who serve abc files in a way that John Chambers called | "getting it right" above. You might be impressed by what the search program for my Tune Finder has seen. ABC files are sent in more forms than you might imagine. The most common type is text/plain. Several sites do send the official text/vnd.abc type. Several send application/*, where * has several different values. Several send ABC encoded (usually incorrectly) as HTML. Sometimes the HTML has the text/html type; sometimes it's other things. At least two send plain-text ABC but label it as HTML. That one took me a bit of head-scratching to handle correctly. A few are so garbled that I just give up. | OK, now two concrete questions from me: | | 1) So are the world's abc collections all currently presenting their files | as text/plain, and you deprecate this status quo practice? Nope; not hardly. That's the most common type, but it's nowhere close to universal. In practical terms, people can make their web servers send files however they like, and there's nothing much you can do about it. | 2) Given that I would like my new server to behave like everyone else's | server, do you recommend that I ask my sysadmin to remove the MIME type | text/vnd.abc for *.abc files and instead create another MIME type | text/plain for *.abc files? Or how should I best clearly word my request to | a busy sysadmin who cares little about abc and us users of it? Well, making it behave "like everyone else's" is hopeless. If the goal is to make abc usable without any browser configuration, about the only thing that works is to say that .abc files should be sent as text/plain. But this does defeat any attempts by more knowledgeable users to make their browsers recognize ABC and do something musical with them. It forces users to start up ABC software separately, and use cut-and-paste to copy tunes from their browser window to the ABC program's window. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
Alan Ng wrote: Hello again, I appreciate the reasons why John C. and Frank Nordberg have compiled browser customization tips for committed abc users, ... It wasn't much of an effort. Basically there was this discussion here at abcusers and wer decided to just post it. ... OK, now two concrete questions from me: 1) So are the world's abc collections all currently presenting their files as text/plain, and you deprecate this status quo practice? Up until now webmasters have been recommended to use the special abc mime type. (Most of them haven't bothered, though.) There haven't been any disadvantages to this. If the user had his computer configured for ABC, the files was treated accordingly, if not they were treated as plain text. But it seems things have changed drastically, so I guess we'll have reconsider the whole thing. I wish the browser developers could at least e mail us webmasters and tell us "hey, you know we had this amazingly crazy idea over a couple of beers yesterday, so now you'll have to redo half your site!" every time it happened. 2) Given that I would like my new server to behave like everyone else's server, do you recommend that I ask my sysadmin to remove the MIME type text/vnd.abc for *.abc files and instead create another MIME type text/plain for *.abc files? Or how should I best clearly word my request to a busy sysadmin who cares little about abc and us users of it? How about "please reset the mime type for the suffix .abc to text/plain". That should do it. Frank Nordberg --- To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
Alan Ng wrote: My new server is a remote, rented NT server, and I have successfully had the sysadmin add the text/vnd.abc MIME type as registered by Steve Allen to the server setup. However, both before and after that happened, the server does not deliver the file to the browser as a plain text file, which is of course the preferred way to view abc files. Before the MIME type, the browser would say "give me a file name to save this file locally." After the MIME type was added, the browser now receives the file and says I don't have the right plug-in to deal with text/vnd.abc files. This looks like a local problem with your browser, rather than the server. Depending on which browser you use, there should be a preferences setting somewhere which lets you specify what you want to do with downloaded text/vnd.abc. In Netscape 4 for Mac you choose 'Preferences' from the Edit menu, then select Navigator Applications in the left panel of the resulting dialog. You can specify any program which will open text files to handle it. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Alan Ng wrote: Dear abcusers, I'm trying to set up my new website to serve abc files properly, but I'm having problems. My new server is a remote, rented NT server, and I have successfully had the sysadmin add the text/vnd.abc MIME type as registered by Steve Allen to the server setup. However, both before and after that happened, the server does not deliver the file to the browser as a plain text file, which is of course the preferred way to view abc files. Before the MIME type, the browser would say "give me a file name to save this file locally." After the MIME type was added, the browser now receives the file and says I don't have the right plug-in to deal with text/vnd.abc files. So this at least indicates that the MIME type is been sent ok from the server ends. Seems to me like a browser setup thing. What browser is it, how do you tell it what to do with a particular mime-type, what is it set to be supposed to be doing ? What step have I missed? Or is this a question for the abc developers list? If the latter, could someone please e-mail me directions for getting on that? I have the impression this is dead. Unless anybody knows better ? -- 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
[abcusers] abc server setup?
Request for more help with server setup: Phil Taylor and Richard Robinson both suggested that each user's browser needs to be set up with the abc MIME type in order to view abc files. However, I have never had to do that, and obviously it would be a disadvantage to the general success of abc notation, if every user had to do that with every new browser they installed. For example, the exact same browsers, running on the exact same machine (my home Win 98 machine), do not behave this way at all when I go to abc files at my old web site (on a university-run Unix server) or any of the other abc sites linked to from Chris Walshaw's mega-index. I've now confirmed this behavior with Navigator 4.08, Navigator 3.04, Internet Explorer 5.0, and Lynx 2.8.3. I suspect this is an issue particular to NT servers (blasted Microsoft!) - does anyone out there have a successful NT server setup for abc? If so, please drop me a line. Maybe there's something more specific I need to tell the sysadmin about how to set up the abc MIME type? I told him "text/vnd.abc" and that is indeed what Navigator 4.08 tells me that the NT server is trying to give me (and needs a special plug-in). Interestingly, Lynx reveals that this NT server (with the registered MIME type) is sending the file as "application/octet-stream". Internet Explorer, by the way, accepts the .abc file, opening it in NotePad, which is how I've got my Win98 set up to handle local abc files. But that's not what I want the stupid browser to do. I want it to show it in the browser as plain text like every other normal browser does (double-blasted Microsoft!!). Alan Ng [EMAIL PROTECTED] linguae: US/DE/NL http://alan-ng.net German Dept., Univ. Wisconsin-Madison, USAhttp://germanistik.net To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
At 05:07 PM 2/22/2001 +, John Chambers wrote: Maybe you should tell us the URL for your server. Several of us have web testing tools, and we could quickly discover what the server is actually sending. (It's possible that the server is sending a good type, and lynx mapped it to application/octet-stream, but this isn't the most likely explanation.) Please try any of the three files: http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-reels.abc http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-jigs.abc http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-other.abc Thanks for your help! Alan Ng [EMAIL PROTECTED] linguae: US/DE/NL http://alan-ng.net German Dept., Univ. Wisconsin-Madison, USAhttp://germanistik.net To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
Alan Ng writes: | Maybe there's something more specific I need to tell the sysadmin about how | to set up the abc MIME type? I told him "text/vnd.abc" and that is indeed | what Navigator 4.08 tells me that the NT server is trying to give me (and | needs a special plug-in). Interestingly, Lynx reveals that this NT server | (with the registered MIME type) is sending the file as | "application/octet-stream". Aha! This is MIME-talk for "unknown file format, treated as binary data". It's about the worst possible type that a server could send, unless you really intend for the client to have no clue about what's inside the file. There are other servers about that do this with .abc files; it part of the reason that I decided to have my ABC tune finder return files as ABC (text/vnd.abc) or TXT (text/plain). That way, even if the server is screwed up, I have a way of undoing the bad type and converting it with a good type. Maybe you should tell us the URL for your server. Several of us have web testing tools, and we could quickly discover what the server is actually sending. (It's possible that the server is sending a good type, and lynx mapped it to application/octet-stream, but this isn't the most likely explanation.) | Internet Explorer, by the way, accepts the .abc file, opening it in | NotePad, which is how I've got my Win98 set up to handle local abc files. | But that's not what I want the stupid browser to do. I want it to show it | in the browser as plain text like every other normal browser does | (double-blasted Microsoft!!). Hmmm ... I wonder what it's seeing, and how it's configured. If the server really is sending text/vnd.abc, some browsers do the sensible thing and say "The type vnd.abc isn't in my list, but I know how to handle text/plain, so I'll treat it as that." Or it could be saying "I don't know how to deal with application/octet-stream, but the .abc suffix is in my list, so I'll treat it as that." You haven't given quite enough clues to fully diagnose the problem. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
Alan Ng wrote: At 05:07 PM 2/22/2001 +, John Chambers wrote: Maybe you should tell us the URL for your server. Several of us have web testing tools, and we could quickly discover what the server is actually sending. (It's possible that the server is sending a good type, and lynx mapped it to application/octet-stream, but this isn't the most likely explanation.) Please try any of the three files: http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-reels.abc http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-jigs.abc http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-other.abc I had no problems with those at all, that is they were treated exactly as I've told Netscape to treat ABC files. Frank Nordberg --- To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
Phil Taylor wrote: Alan Ng wrote: My new server is a remote, rented NT server, and I have successfully had the sysadmin add the text/vnd.abc MIME type as registered by Steve Allen to the server setup. However, both before and after that happened, the server does not deliver the file to the browser as a plain text file, which is of course the preferred way to view abc files. Before the MIME type, the browser would say "give me a file name to save this file locally." After the MIME type was added, the browser now receives the file and says I don't have the right plug-in to deal with text/vnd.abc files. This looks like a local problem with your browser, rather than the server. Depending on which browser you use, there should be a preferences setting somewhere which lets you specify what you want to do with downloaded text/vnd.abc. In Netscape 4 for Mac you choose 'Preferences' from the Edit menu, then select Navigator Applications in the left panel of the resulting dialog. You can specify any program which will open text files to handle it. Me and John Chambers joined forces once to make a list of instructions how to configure various brower/OS combinations for ABC. My part of the project is located at http://www.musicaviva.com/abc/browsers.html and includes instructions for Mac/IE 4.5, Mac/Netscape 4.5 and Windows/IE. John's page is at http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/doc/BrowserConfig.html and includes Unix/Netscape and Mac/AOL. That ought to cover the most common combinations, but there are still lots of holes, and any help filling them would be very much appreciated. Frank Nordberg To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
Frank Nordberg wrote: | Alan Ng wrote: | Please try any of the three files: | http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-reels.abc | http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-jigs.abc | http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-other.abc | | I had no problems with those at all, that is they were treated exactly | as I've told Netscape to treat ABC files. Out of curiosity, I tried fetching just http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ to get a list of the files there. The server gave: HTTP/1.1 403 Access Forbidden Any chance you could get your webmaster to turn on directory indexing? It would help others diagnose problems. We could quickly check all the files, and find out which ones have problems. (This is something else that webmasters often get wrong, usually out of some misguided security concerns. But there's no real security problem, since when you put a file in a web directory, you normally want people to be able to read it. That's why you put it there, after all. Blocking directory indexing just makes life difficult for everyone, especially the person trying to set up the web site.) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc server setup?
Alan, I'm getting the same thing Laura is - a box pops up to download it. I tried both accessing it from the link in your email, and manually typing the URL into Netscape, but it didn't make any difference. It isn't displaying the contents of the file in the browser window at all, so I can't see what's in the file without downloading it to my hard drive first. The URL Laura included to her site displays through the browser as expected, so I don't think there's anything unusual about my browser configuration. Wendy On 22 Feb 2001, Laura Conrad wrote: Date: 22 Feb 2001 17:26:36 -0500 From: Laura Conrad [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [abcusers] abc server setup? "Alan" == Alan Ng [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Alan Please try any of the three files: Alan http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-reels.abc Alan http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-jigs.abc Alan http://alan-ng.net/irish/abc/ng-other.abc I get a box to download them. With the abc files I have up on my website (and the same browser), I get them displayed in the browser. An example URL is: http://www.laymusic.org/music/dowland/sorrow/allparts.abc -- Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.laymusic.org : Putting live music back in the living room. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html Wendy To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] abc server setup?
Dear abcusers, I'm trying to set up my new website to serve abc files properly, but I'm having problems. My new server is a remote, rented NT server, and I have successfully had the sysadmin add the text/vnd.abc MIME type as registered by Steve Allen to the server setup. However, both before and after that happened, the server does not deliver the file to the browser as a plain text file, which is of course the preferred way to view abc files. Before the MIME type, the browser would say "give me a file name to save this file locally." After the MIME type was added, the browser now receives the file and says I don't have the right plug-in to deal with text/vnd.abc files. What step have I missed? Or is this a question for the abc developers list? If the latter, could someone please e-mail me directions for getting on that? Thanks, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Alan Ng Madison, Wisconsin, USA www.alan-ng.netlinguae: US/DE/NL To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
