Re: [abcusers] how well supported is the overlay operator
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 20:40:43 -0200, Hudson Lacerda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I didn't see in abcm2ps-4.8.0 documentation an explicit limit for the number of temporary voices, or the difference between and . [snip] Yes, there are many lacks in the abcm2ps documentation! There is no explicit limit to the number of temporary voices except that these ones enter in the voice table which is limited to 32, and that more than 4 voices per staff is not handled. The overlay operator was a proposal from Taral. He thought that the single operator '' could force the stem of the added voice to go down, while '' would let the program to compute it. In abcm2ps, this feature never worked (the stem direction is always computed, and *cannot* be forced - while it may be forced for normal voices by 'V:x stem=up|down|auto'). In the next release, I will remove this '' operator and also make the multi-bar overlay sequence to end only on ')' instead of on a single ')'. -- Ken ar c'hentañ | ** Breizh ha Linux atav! ** | http://moinejf.free.fr/ Pépé Jef| mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] how well supported is the overlay operator
John Walsh said: For instance, the 2.0 standard says that one should start the overlay at a barline. However, this might force one to extend the segment further than absolutely necessary, particularly if the barlines are sparse. The longer the segment, the harder the proofreading. I'd suggest adding a start/stop character, making it possible to start and end in the middle of a measure, and to continue across barlines. In abc2mtex, it's ; abcm2ps suggests ( and ) for that, and uses for something else. Also, if you look through the archives, you'll find a message that I wrote about the 2.0 spec and overlays. The point being that the () syntax did not conflict with the current syntax and that the example given for voice overlays in the spec was actually incorrect. I think that the spec author (I apologize for not having that handy right now) accepted the () syntax but has not released a new 2.0 spec since the time that we had that discussion. tom -- tom satter - or just plain old tom (303) 543-7623 (home) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] how well supported is the overlay operator
On 12 Nov 2004, at 02:16, Richard Robinson wrote: On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 11:23:59PM +, Phil Taylor wrote: On 11 Nov 2004, at 20:32, Atte André Jensen wrote: Hi I'm wondering how standard the overlay operator is? Which programs supports the following for instance: L:1/8 | G3G- G2FG [C8D8] | AFAIK only abcm2ps supports it at the moment. I intend to support it in BarFly in due course. abc2mtex did something with it, didn't it ? But I forget the details. Did it really? There's no mention of it in the docs, and I don't have a working copy at the moment to try it out. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] how well supported is the overlay operator
On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 10:35:11AM +, Phil Taylor wrote: On 12 Nov 2004, at 02:16, Richard Robinson wrote: On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 11:23:59PM +, Phil Taylor wrote: On 11 Nov 2004, at 20:32, Atte André Jensen wrote: Hi I'm wondering how standard the overlay operator is? Which programs supports the following for instance: L:1/8 | G3G- G2FG [C8D8] | AFAIK only abcm2ps supports it at the moment. I intend to support it in BarFly in due course. abc2mtex did something with it, didn't it ? But I forget the details. Did it really? There's no mention of it in the docs, and I don't have a working copy at the moment to try it out. From usrguide.tex :- the character is carried straight through to the TeX output and the characters produce a \enotes\notes pair. Thus the input DEFG ABcd A4 e2 c2| produces [2 staves] To explain this to those unfamiliar with MusicTeX, the DEFG are put on the lowest stave. The then tells MusicTeX to move up a stave, where it puts the ABcd. The first notes of each group are aligned. The (or a bar line) moves the output back down to the lowest stave and resets the alignment, so that in this case, the A4 is on the lower stave, and is aligned with the e2 on the upper stave. ah ... related, then, but not altogether similiar. -- 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
Re: [abcusers] how well supported is the overlay operator
On 12 Nov 2004, at 14:07, Richard Robinson wrote: From usrguide.tex :- the character is carried straight through to the TeX output and the characters produce a \enotes\notes pair. Thus the input DEFG ABcd A4 e2 c2| produces [2 staves] To explain this to those unfamiliar with MusicTeX, the DEFG are put on the lowest stave. The then tells MusicTeX to move up a stave, where it puts the ABcd. The first notes of each group are aligned. The (or a bar line) moves the output back down to the lowest stave and resets the alignment, so that in this case, the A4 is on the lower stave, and is aligned with the e2 on the upper stave. ah ... related, then, but not altogether similiar. I see - it's a MusicTex function then, rather than part of abc2mtex? Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] how well supported is the overlay operator
Richard Robinson writes: abc2mtex did something with it, didn't it ? But I forget the details. Yes, as a matter of fact, it did. I was just thinking that what goes around, comes around, since this is now appearing once again. (By the way, there's no worry about backward compatibility here---not that anyone is worrying about compatibility with abc2mtex anyway---for it was just a hack to make multistaff music possible at that time, and it was soon obsoleted by the V: field. If more than ten people in the world ever used it, I'd be surprised.) Phil Taylor writes: I see - it's a MusicTex function then, rather than part of abc2mtex? Well...it is and it isn't. The is part of musixtex, and the is part of abc2mtex, (which of course translates it into something different in musixtex.) It worked the following way: if one had three voices, say, then the command would toggle the voices in turn, i.e. notes1 notes 2 notes3 would give the notes in the first voice, the parallel notes in the second voice, and ditto in the third. (But an additional would *not* send it back to the first voice---that might be ok for machines, but for humans it's a guaranteed disaster...it would take no time to get completely lost in the voices.) In fact, there was another mechanism for that, which was a start/stop operator, . With this, the above would actually be written notes1 notes 2 notes3 The second resets it to the first voice. Admittedly, when we talk about voice overlay, we are talking about something slightly different from the above. In abc2mtex, the voices were pre-defined in the header, just as the V: field is now. I'll call such voices globally defined. So abc2mtex used it for globally-defined voices. The operator is now being suggested instead for what I might call locally-defined voices, or even implicitly-defined voices, voices which appear suddenly, then disappear after a couple of bars, without ever being defined by a V: field. [Of course it's probably used for other purposes, too...] I have used this machanism a couple of times with abc2mtex---but no more often than I absolutely had to. (Tried it, didn't like it.) The problem is that it is extremely difficult to proofread and correct. I could find a mistake in the staff output, but re-finding it in the abc was another problem. Like as not, I'd end up correcting the wrong notes. And this was with only two voices. Once you've used the character a few times, it's difficult to sort thru all of them to find the spot that you're after. From the number of posts in this thread, it looks as if this is a good feature, and probably deserves some thought, so let me make a couple of observations. From my experience, I'd say that the operative thing here is ease of proofreading and correcting, even more than ease of either writing or reading. For instance, the 2.0 standard says that one should start the overlay at a barline. However, this might force one to extend the segment further than absolutely necessary, particularly if the barlines are sparse. The longer the segment, the harder the proofreading. I'd suggest adding a start/stop character, making it possible to start and end in the middle of a measure, and to continue across barlines. In abc2mtex, it's ; abcm2ps suggests ( and ) for that, and uses for something else. I like that, since the pren tells you if it's the start or end of a segment, and that simplifies finding the critical place in the abc. A couple of questions. If I read the abcm2ps documentation correctly, it's possible to have two implicitly-defined voices on each staff (making three voices in all) one gotten with and the other with . (The limitation seems to come from the need to distinguish voices by note-staff directions.) Is there any need for more than this? The abcm2ps documentation mentions the problem of distinguishing ( from the beginning of a slur, but is that a real problem? Can't one just treat ( as a special case like (3 for a triplet? If it should be absolutely necessary to have a slur just before an , then add a space between them: ( . (Of course, there remains the question of whether that slur applies to one voice, or to all. Hey---that's someone else's problem.) Cheers, John Walsh To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] how well supported is the overlay operator
John Walsh wrote: [snip] A couple of questions. If I read the abcm2ps documentation correctly, it's possible to have two implicitly-defined voices on each staff (making three voices in all) one gotten with and the other with . (The limitation seems to come from the need to distinguish voices by note-staff directions.) Is there any need for more than this? Four voices in a same staff are very common in guitar pieces (and even in Bach's solo violin pieces), although I don't know a ABC program that can manage that cleanly (abcm2ps is in the way). I don't know what is your abcm2ps version, but with the current version (abcm2ps-4.8.0) this code works fine: X:1 M:3/4 L:1/4 K:C clef=treble c'd'e' cde CDE F,G,A, | I didn't see in abcm2ps-4.8.0 documentation an explicit limit for the number of temporary voices, or the difference between and . This difference is described in the 3.7.1 documentation, but `Note 2' says that was not implemented. `Note 1' is related to the following question: The abcm2ps documentation mentions the problem of distinguishing ( from the beginning of a slur, but is that a real problem? Can't one just treat ( as a special case like (3 for a triplet? If it should be absolutely necessary to have a slur just before an , then add a space between them: ( . (Of course, there remains the question of whether that slur applies to one voice, or to all. Hey---that's someone else's problem.) Please note that the syntax for voice overlay is different in the two versions I cited above. The abcm2ps-3.7.1 uses the delimitators ( ) -- i.e the same as slurs; the new versions use ( and ) [without spaces], so there is not more that problem with the slurs. - One interesting thing in abcm2ps-3.7.1 description is that and differs as regards the *stem direction* (but this is another story...). Hudson To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] how well supported is the overlay operator
On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 05:53:21PM +, Phil Taylor wrote: On 12 Nov 2004, at 14:07, Richard Robinson wrote: the character is carried straight through to the TeX output and the characters produce a \enotes\notes pair. Thus the input DEFG ABcd A4 e2 c2| produces [2 staves] To explain this to those unfamiliar with MusicTeX, the DEFG are put on the lowest stave. The then tells MusicTeX to move up a stave, where it puts the ABcd. The first notes of each group are aligned. The (or a bar line) moves the output back down to the lowest stave and resets the alignment, so that in this case, the A4 is on the lower stave, and is aligned with the e2 on the upper stave. ah ... related, then, but not altogether similiar. I see - it's a MusicTex function then, rather than part of abc2mtex? Um. I don't know. It was a thing you could write in an ABC tune, once upon a time. -- 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
Re: [abcusers] how well supported is the overlay operator
On 11 Nov 2004, at 20:32, Atte André Jensen wrote: Hi I'm wondering how standard the overlay operator is? Which programs supports the following for instance: L:1/8 | G3G- G2FG [C8D8] | AFAIK only abcm2ps supports it at the moment. I intend to support it in BarFly in due course. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] how well supported is the overlay operator
On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 11:23:59PM +, Phil Taylor wrote: On 11 Nov 2004, at 20:32, Atte André Jensen wrote: Hi I'm wondering how standard the overlay operator is? Which programs supports the following for instance: L:1/8 | G3G- G2FG [C8D8] | AFAIK only abcm2ps supports it at the moment. I intend to support it in BarFly in due course. abc2mtex did something with it, didn't it ? But I forget the details. -- 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
