Laurie Griffiths <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> No!! I am very much against this. Although it may be convenient for
> writers of ABC it's horrid for readers. It makles it even harder to extract
> a tune and the probability would be very high that we should find orphan
> bits of ABC floating round with macros used but not defined.
It's not as bad as all that. In the case of tempo specifications, a
player program could always fall back to a list of standard speeds (like
the ones given on a honest-to-goodness wind-up metronome) while
outputting a warning to its user that the tempo specification is
undefined. Notation programs are likely to output just the macro `name',
anyway (like `Allegro'), so it doesn't really matter whether there is a
speed associated with it or not.
The nice thing about Jack's original proposal (which the silly
discussion on `display' vs. `playback' speeds has managed to obscure
quite thoroughly) is that it abstracts musical information (like
`Allegro') from presentation issues and/or matters of taste/convention
(like `1/4=120'). If implemented, it would, among other things, make it
possible to control the tempo of a bunch of tunes without having to
change the `Q:' line for every single one, which I find quite appealing.
Anselm
--
Anselm Lingnau .......................................... [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I think there is a world market for about five computers.
-- Thomas J. Watson, CEO, IBM Corporation, 1947
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