Phil Taylor gave us Barfly. Though I don't use a Mac I am given to understand that Barfly is the defacto standard for abc software on that platform and that it does a pretty good job of playing and scoring abc. Laurie Griffiths gave us Muse. It doesn't "flip my personal wipper" but I'd be the first to state that it is a very useful tool that is deservedly popular among Windows users who like a GUI interface with their abc. James Allright brought us abc2midi, abc2abc, midi2abc, and most recently yaps. I haven't looked at the latter but abc2abc and abc2midi are fantastic programs. There are things I would have done differently, but that does not detract from the fact that these are extremely useful tools. Michael Methfessel brought us the original abc2ps which, with its variants, remains possibly the best completely free music typsetting system available today. Jean-Francois Moine modified abc2ps into abcm2ps, implementing support for multiple staves and voices. John Chambers and others have further modified abc2ps and abcm2ps adding additional features. All of the folks above have two things in common. First, they produced or modified software to significantly improve the basic usefulness of abc. Second, they sometimes had to bend or break the standard a bit to do so. And then there is Bryan, whose first and so far only contribution to the abc user community is a program that will tell us when our abc notation is "wrong." There's nothing inheritantly bad in that, and in fact it could be useful. But it certainly is a telling revelation of the difference between Bryan's personality and that of every other abc developer on this list. Combine that with a severely annoying tendency to whine and pout and it's little wonder that most of us do our best to ignore him even on those rare occasions when we agree with him. His posts too often remind me of a neighbor who used to berate everyone on the block for putting their garbage on the "wrong" side of their driveways on trash pickup day. He was such an annoying little SOB that some on the block started going out of their way to place their trash opposite what he insisted was the "right" side. I don't think there is a developer on this list who wouldn't love to see a responsive and flexible, but concrete and comprehensive, abc standard. But most of us have learned that isn't going to happen and have decided to work with what is, instead of whining incessantly about what should be. As Phil pointed out, there is a sort of informal democratic process at work in the development of the abc standard. If you want to vote, then write some software, or convince a developer that your desire is reasonable. Addition (and deprecation) of abc syntax really is pretty much democratic. If a developer implements a pet syntax element in his software and users begin to use it a lot, other developers follow suit and the feature becomes a defacto part of the language whether it is ever put in the standard or not. (The V: syntax is an excellent example of this dynamic at work.) This approach has both advantages and disadvantages, and we could argue their relative merits for the next several months. But, as so many people on this list have tried to point out, that's a vain waste of time -- it's far more productive to learn to work with what *is.* If developers had waited until the V: syntax was formally adopted into the standard, we would STILL not have multi-voice abc, abc would be absolutely useless for most of my purposes, and I suspect the same is true for many others. Bryan, if the K:^f syntax is so important to you, then begin using it. Use John Chambers variant of abc2ps to print it. Better yet, write some software of your own that uses it. Add it to your abc source checker, having it print a warning that it is not yet adopted in the standard. Use it in the copious amounts of abc notation that you are transcribing and contributing to the user community (what was that URL, BTW?) If you are right, and there is sufficient demand for the syntax, other developers will follow you and John Chambers and begin incorporating it into their software. At that point, like the V: syntax, it will matter little whether it is in the standard; for better or worse it will have become a defacto part of the language. If Phil objects that's his problem. Instead of arguing and whining, just press on. You have as much right to use K:^f as he does to unilaterally decide that an exclamation point! is used for the end of a line (I think it's Barfly that does that, if not I apologize, Phil). Of course, if you want to produce midi output from your abc you'll have to invest as much time and energy as he and the other developers on this list by writing a midi player that handles the syntax. When you prove yourself willing to do that, the rest of us might take your recommendations a bit more seriously. In short, stop whining and take action. Or, at least stop whining. Please. Pppllleeeeeaaaaase stop whining! John Atchley To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
