On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, John Chambers wrote:
>
> Of course, with case 3, you want to be able to omit both the root
> (aka tonic) and the mode when it's not practical to get them right.
> But in cases 1 and 2, the ideal would be to encourage people to give
> the tonic if they know it, plus the key signature.
>
> One of the advantages of ABC over traditional staff notation, which
> carries over to computerized music (plain text vs GIF or other image
> formats) is that computerized lookups become possible. Classical key
> signatures don't indicate the tonic, but this isn't a problem because
> you can't search printed music anyway except by laboriously leafing
> through pages of music. But with ABC, it's now possible to ask the
> computer things like "Find me a jig in the key of G."
>
> So we want to encourage giving the tonic, while not requiring it.
I didn't want to copy in John's entire post, as I'm sure everyone's read
it, but since we're starting the discussion fresh, I want to add my
support for his solution. Speaking for myself, my primary concern about
the modes question was, and still is, that the current functionality
doesn't get broken, both for the sake of the existing body of tunes on the
web, and the ability to search them. If there is a way to do that and to
expand ABC's capabilities for handling other music not covered by the
existing standard, so much the better. John's solution does seem to do
that.
Wendy
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