Not long ago, someone posted a question here (abc users list) about palmabc. This was a new one on me. I am a Palm user who has been waiting years for a workable abc player for the Palm OS. My posts here requesting one go back two years. Dave Holland's "abc Viewer" <http://www.zenda.demon.co.uk/dave/abc.html> has, AFAIK, been the only abc software available for the Palm units, and (as its name implies) is only a viewer.
So I had a look <http://www.gander.demon.co.uk/palmabc.htm> and installed it (V 1.0a) on my Palm VIIx. There is precious little documentation about how to use the program, and it seems to be only a player. It would be tempting to say next that it might complement "abc Viewer" in that regard but unfortunately the two programs work with abc files stored differently: abc Viewer works directly with standard "memo" files created and stored by the Palm's own memo software (one tune per memo) while palmabc maintains its own database of tunes (all in one indexed list). The only way to access the same tune with both programs seems to be to copy and paste it from one to the other and store it in both formats. The software is freely available under the terms of the GNU public license. The program boasts of a conduit/synchronizing function that keeps the tunes on the Palm unit and the tunes in a specific file on your computer synchronized with each other, but it only works in Windows and I have a Mac, so I have not evaluated that aspect of the program. The program does not handle multiple voices, and I seem to have found a bug: after notating a test tune I attempted to delete it and the wrong tune got deleted (this can't have been my error, as the "Delete" button appears at the bottom of the page of abc notation, not a list of tunes). Also, every time I hit the "New" button a dummy header appears with standard X:, T:, etc. fields. The X: field continues to increase even if previous tunes have been deleted. The fields are editable, so I can change it as I like, but I wonder whether this will one day reach a maximum and make the program useless (i.e., there must be a maximum number of times I can hit the "New" button, regardless of whether or not I save a tune each time). I am surprised we have not heard more about this on this list. The software was created last June (2001). The author is Steve Spencer-Jowett, a name I do not recognize from this list, although James Allwright is also credited in the "about" window. Before I got my first Palm unit (1999) I had an HP 200LX and used Jim Vint's PlayQabc for a very similar purpose. In short: palmabc is an abc player for the Palm OS that plays single voice tunes from the unit's speaker. It has some quirks that could use work (as noted above) and it would be nice if: 1) It utilized tunes stored in the "memo" function, as does abc Viewer and 2) The conduit/sync function worked on the Macintosh. All in all, however, it seems to be a good start. I'm glad to have it and will certainly find it useful. I hope the author (who is getting a cc of this) will chime in on the list. ______ /\/\/\/\ <______> | | | | | David Barnert <______> | | | | | <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <______> | | | | | Albany, N.Y. <______> \/\/\/\/ Ventilator Concertina Bellows Bellows (Vocation) (Avocation) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
