Hi Doug, Interesting, I was just thinking about the same thing over the weekend. I've put quite a few hours of time over the last four years into 5 Line Skink, and I asked myself whether it was worth continuing, given the high quality of other packages out there. I came to a slightly different conclusion than you, based on, I think, slightly different requirements. I'm a folk musician, and I play fiddle, cittern, mandolin and guitar. On any given evening that I play, I might end up playing a couple of hundred tunes from memory. I use abc more as a machine-readable tunebook than as a way to create calligraphic-quality scores. I might search for a set of three or four tunes to print out as a set to give out at a session so others can learn them, and I fairly frequently enter tunes, either because I got a much-photocopied almost illegible piece of paper or in order to record something I learned by ear.
For me, then, being able to quickly scroll through a list of tunes, being able to use abc as a sort of free-form database (show me all the jigs in G Dorian), and being able to spend only ten minutes to get a recognizable bare-bones version of a tune so I don't forget it, is more important than the graphical interface. I think that software like yours which can import abc is also important, because it allows people who want to add the advanced layout features to the score to do that, while preserving the collective time and effort invested in recording the huge body of music currently in abc. In other words, I agree, the graphical music handling package has an important place, but I concluded that the package that handles tunebooks as a quick reference for players like me is also important. I don't believe that 5 Line Skink will ever compete with Sibelius or Finale, but neither do I expect O'Neill's Music of Ireland to be available in native Finale format. My two cents wil Doug Rogers/Yowza Software wrote: > Dear ABCer's: > > Over the past few years several fans of ABC notation > urged me to add the ability to import and export ABC to my > notation software ( MusEdit, http://www.musedit.com ) and I > did that about six months ago. Since then I've been monitoring > the ABC list for new developments in this "language". There are > lots of proposed changes, and once they settle down I'll be > adding the new "standards" to my software (all updates to > MusEdit are free to folks who purchase the program). But I > feel a need to comment on ABC vs. graphical interfaces... > > I know that the big advantage of ABC is that it is text-based > and therefore "readable" by anyone, and by a lot of software, and > it's also platform independent. But it sure is nice to use software > which is graphics based for something which is as inherently > graphical as music notation. A good looking musical score can > be as pretty as a calligraphic medieval manuscript, in my opinion. > And although, for example, MusEdit is a Windows program, > it can (like other notation software I suppose) create very nice > looking ".png" (portable network graphics) images which are > cross-platform in the sense that they can be viewed on > Linux, Mac, and PC's, et al. > > I've been reading for the past months about whether or not ABC can > handle slides, slash chords, alternate endings, etc. and then reading > about how some of these features are "encoded" into the language... > I must say that after reading about the limitations, or seeing some > of the solutions ( such as: "^f-|f-|f-|_g-|g-|^^e-|e-|^f " ), well, it's a real > treat to simply work with a real, graphical score, and use a couple > of mouse clicks to put in ties, alternate endings, text in different > fonts, chords, a huge vocabulary of different symbols, etc. Maybe > most ABC people do edit their scores with a graphical editor, but > I guess I'm writing this to remind those who don't that for a pretty small > investment (less than $100 for MusEdit and several other notation > packages) you can have the ease and pleasure of working in the > more natural graphical way with your music. And when you > need to you can export / import the music as ABC. It's sad to > see how the nice aesthetic features of a score get stripped away > when you export and then reimport a score through the ABC > language (it's like turning that beautiful medieval manuscript into > a few paragraphs of text in plain courier font), but at least you don't > have to restrict yourself to such bare-bones music all the time > if you have your own graphical editor. > > Just a reminder / suggestion... > > Doug Rogers > Yowza Software > http://www.musedit.com > > To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: >http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
