>>>>> "Bob" == Bob Archer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Bob> At 09:05 PM 26-10-00 +0200, Frank Nordberg wrote:
>> Philip Rowe wrote:
>>> Is the printed output better than anything the ABC community can
>>> offer?
>>
>> Yes.
Bob> That sounds like a challenge to me. In what way is the
Bob> current output of abc programs lacking?
To some extent that's an esthetic judgement. I have posted some of my
recent results with converting abc to lilypond; if you want to compare
them look at
http://www.laymusic.org/music/dowland/unquiet/allparts.pdf, which is
from abc2ps, and compare it with the first song in
http://www.laymusic.org/music/dowland/book/dowland.pdf, which is from
lilypond. If there's demand, I can put up a comparison that's easier
to download. Someone who uses finale could put up a comparison between
a finale pdf and the same music from abc2ps or some other abc program.
Some of it doesn't involve value judgements at all: if you want to
typeset some kinds of music you need features that aren't present in
the ABC standard, and for some things aren't in any ABC program I know
about at all. For the
16th century polyphony I set, I would like:
Notes with longer than whole note values.
C, G, and F clefs on several possible lines
An ability to switch to and from a smaller font, for things
like incipits and cues.
Editorial accidentals, that either display differently, or
don't display at all on the printout but are used by a player
program.
Other people who do other kinds of music need features like:
more complicated repeat structures
More ornamentation and articulation symbols.
Notation for non-standard scales.
Ability to enter percussion parts and have them display the
way percussionists expect to see them.
All of these things are possible in a program that was designed to be
a full-featured music printing program, and are not currently possible
in standard ABC.
Another thing I'm enjoying in lilypond that has nothing to do with
what the printout looks like is the ability to easily include it in a
TeX file (along with text and graphics) and have TeX take care of the
page breaks for me. We would have something like this with abc2mtex,
if that would catch up with the current _de facto_ standard.
--
Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org )
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