>>>>> "Frank" == Frank Nordberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Frank> Laura Conrad wrote:
>>
>> I wouldn't waste my time on conversion to a non-free, questionably
>> stable format, no.
Frank> I don't know what you mean with "stable", Laura. Finale has
Frank> been around for more than ten years now and has remained
Frank> more or less the industial standard for most of that
Frank> period.
I may be tarring all commercial developers with the Microsoft brush,
but as far as I know the etf format isn't guaranteed not to change.
And I don't know what the quality of the documentation is.
Frank> I don't think any other notation software system can claim
Frank> anything like that. ETF files writeen ten years ago are
Frank> still fully readable by today's versions of Finale (and
Frank> soon Lilypond as well).
I don't know on what you base that prediction. The reason the
ABC-lilypond converter is starting to be usable, a couple of years
after it was first written, is that there is a population of would-be
lilypond users who have music in ABC that they want another option
for, and some of us have put work into the converter. I'm not in a
position to do that work on etf2ly converter, and I don't know that
anyone else is either.
The current etf2ly converter is something Han-Wen (the chief developer
of Lilypond) wrote in an afternoon, and it won't be usable unless
someone puts at least several more afternoons into it to cover all the
things Han-Wen didn't think of or couldn't fit into an afternoon.
In free software, the fact that something is possible doesn't
guarantee that it will happen; it's the fact that it's possible and a
lot of the people who could do it want it. One of the requirements
for doing this is having a copy of Finale and knowing a lot about how
to use it, and most of the people I know who meet that qualification
have no interest in open-source software.
--
Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org )
(Note the email and homepage address changes; please update your
address book, bookmarks, and links.)
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
