----- Original Message ----- From: Anselm Lingnau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2001 3:00 PM Subject: Re: [abcusers] something really simple
> Laurie Griffiths <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > Q:1/4=120 note="Pretty quickly" % [2] explicit tempo with advisory note > > > > OK acceptable but not my preference. "note" is a keyword that I scan for > > (no problem). The use of quotes immediately brings up the question of "what > > if the string is to contain a quote?" An escape mechanism is needed such as > > using \" to represent a quote (and therefore \\ to represent \ too). That > > has been argued before and not everyone liked it. It's at best a necessary > > evil, if it can be avoided altogether then it should be. > > Yes, but we will need *some* delimiter (the same problem occurs > elsewhere in ABC, and we should be consistent), and any character at all > can occur in a tune title, so an escape mechanism would be necessary in > any case. Quotes are, at least, well entrenched in the delimiter role. Read my proposal carefully. There was no delimiter and the syntax worked. OK, to be exact, the delimiter was that the first character of the stuff after the last number must not be a number. Thus if I wanted to have "1-2-3-4" printed as the tempo string I'd have to code Q:3/8=105 1-2-3-4 as opposed to Q:3/8=1051-2-3-4 But I could write Q:3/8=105Larghetto with or without any space. This is so unobtrusive that most people would not notice it and there is no need for any escape mechanism. The trick was to always have the number part first. > Presumably the `key=value' syntax could be specified to require no > spaces between `key' and `=' and `value'. This would make it easy to > distinguish from the `key' occuring on its own in all but pathological > cases. Starting to get artificial and people will get it wrong - one of the lessons in writing an ABC parser is that in real life spaces (end even line-breaks) turn up in many places where they are not really allowed. I don't like this. It's your turn to say what you find unacceptable in the proposal put forward by me and Simon (the two were pretty much identical). Instead of saying yes or no you sort of went off with your own. You did suggest that it was too complicated but to me it looks less complicated than yours. We will never reach agreement unless people start saying so when things seem acceptable. if things are acceptable but you can see an improvement then you (everyone) must say both things. We can then perhaps start to build core proposals that are acceptable and continue to work on the fringes. Eventually there may be enough core stuff to draft, approve, implement, release and use. of course we can still carry on arguing about the NEXT thing. Laurie "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Mark Twain To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
