John Walsh writes:
| >I'm afraid he is right. Presumably guitar chords were originally seen as
| >simple text. We are stuck with the results but can't we learn from the
| >experience and try not to make the same sort of mistake again?
| .. Using the gc chords to put text above the staff is an
| abuse? I don't think so. Not at all. Avoid that kind of mistake in the
| future? Nonsense, it was the best mistake made in the development to date.
| A brilliant mistake. You should make more of them!
Well, I'd agree, but I think there were a bunch of other mistakes in
ABC that were at least equally useful, and which have helped bring in
lots of users.
One which I've used a lot is the "abuse" of P: lines to get random
text above the clef sign. At least, I've been told by a number of
people that what I and others do with it isn't legal.
In this case, I don't think the "abusers" even thought they were
doing anything unusual. P: lines are supposed to mark the "parts" of
a piece of music, right? Well, if you're transcribing a
multi-movement classical work, the "parts" are obviously the sections
typically labelled with terms like Overture or Andante or Vivace or
Rondo or Minuet & Trio or whatever. If you're putting together a
medley page of tunes for a country dance, the "parts" are obviously
the individual tunes in the medley. In both cases, the traditional
notation puts these part names at the left, above the clef, and P:
does that, so it seems like the right thing to do. The fact that the
original docs only gave one example, of Morris tunes, is (in our
minds) merely a case of limited examples, not a statement that P:
can't be used for anything except the repeat pattern of Morris tunes.
But I've been told in no uncertain terms by several people that my
uses of P: are violations of the ABC standard.
So I'd say that the P: notation is, like the chord notation,
something that is useful for much more than that original example.
Not that I object to Morris tunes; I've played for lots of Morris
dance in my past. And I use the P: repeat notation in some of my
other dance music. But there's a real problem with ABC software that
only implements the Morris-tune case. So what we maybe need in the
new standard is a clear statement that P: may be used to apply
arbitrary text to major sections of the music. The P: text is to be
put at the left edge of the page by formatters (and presumably
ignored by most other software, though players might display it as
the section is played).
Invitations are open for other ABC features that turn out to be more
useful than the original examples implied ...
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