Re: [abcusers] chords writing in abc/little V: comment

[Bryancreer]

Phil Taylor said -

>The standard is abc v1.6.  There's also a proposed draft
>standard which is still under discussion.  Neither of them even
>mentions multivoice abc.  Does that mean that nobody is allowed
>to post tunes which use the V: field to this group, which is
>devoted to the discussion of the abc language?

Read your own postings Phil.  A couple of days ago you said -

>1.  Anything but the most simple extension needs some experimentation
>to find out what works.  You've got to do it first, then try it out with
>a lot of music to see if it's a good idea.
>2.  If we had to wait for agreement nothing would ever get done.

The draft standard doesn't consist of proposals it consists of extensions
that someone has already implemented and they aren't being discussed.  They,
and other extensions such as middle= and the various versions of V:, are
already in the public domain and are being used.  Are you prepared to say
that if a vote was taken that went against one of your favourite new
developments you would  be willing to withdraw it?  Or that if a proposal
such as, for example, the !symbol! notation was adopted into the standard you
would be happy to incorperate it into BarFly?

John Chambers said -

>Fat chance.  Even if we try that, experience so far  has  shown  that
>there  are  serious  incompatibilities  possible between two programs
>that follow the "standard".

...and a great deal more beside.

So because we can't make it perfect we shouldn't try to make it better?

>The new, more formal standard will presumably fix a lot of this  sort
>of  problem,

Er? From whence does this come?  Did you read Laura Conrad's posting?

>Programmers will implement
>subsets for the sort of music that they know.

That isn't a problem for anyone except themselves and the users of that
particular software.  The problem that concerns me is extensions beyond the
standard which make tunes inaccessible to all but the software that was used
to produce them, especially if, as in the case of V:, there are several
incompatible versions.

abc could be a top class act.  All it takes is goodwill but, as Laura's
gratifyingly honest description of the achievements of the standards
committee shows, that seems to be somewhat lacking.

Bryan Creer