Phil Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>The early music people need a different convention, where accidentals
>affect only the note to which they are attached, but I think that behaviour
>should be obtainable via a local switch, and the modern convention should
>be the default.
This seems right. Should the "local switch" be indicated in the abc
transcription itself, somehow? On the philosophy that abc encodes necessary
musical information, something that affects how an abc musical note symbol
is interpreted should be determinable by reading the abc. Or must it?
The obvious alternative is that the abc would always use the convention of
persistence of accidentals within a bar, but a program creating an
early-music-style staff display would have a switch which would add and
remove accidentals to the display as needed. But, I presume that this
approach would inconvenience the early-music folks who transcribe abc or
read it directly..?
One could have it both ways. The default in abc transcription itself would
be that accidentals persist in a bar. If you don't want this, there would
be something in the abc (on the overloaded K: line?) that said, in effect,
"in the following transcription, accidentals apply only to the note they
are attached to". What the notes represent the abc transcription itself is
then determinate as to what notes are intended. Then, the question of how
to _display_ this stuff could be controlled by a switch on within a display
program. Conceptually, this is probably the right way to go. It permits
early-music style or contemporary-standard style transcription within abc
itself, and it permits either style of abc transcription to be displayed in
the way the user of the display program desires (depending on the
capabilities of the display program, of course).
Robert Bley-Vroman
Honolulu
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