James Allwright wrights:
| On Mon 15 Apr 2002 at 11:01PM +0200, Forgeot Eric wrote:
| > P:[B]
| > |: b2 a | aba |1-3 c'2b | bc'b :|2-4 e'2d' | e'd'd' :|
| > P:[C]
|
| I usually take X-Y to mean all numbers between X and Y, so the
| above notation looks as if the 2nd and 3rd endings each have
| a choice of what to play. I think that for what you mean, the
| notation 1,3 and 2,4 would be more natural.

Exactly right. Conventional staff notation would have "1,3" and "2,4"
under the ending brackets.  OTOH, you could use
   |: b2 a | aba |1-3 c'2b | bc'b :|4 e'2d' | e'd'd' ||
for a 4-times phrase with only the final ending different. And if you
want to be really picky (and want to be able to match  printed  music
as  closely  as  possible),  you'll  also  allow  a period after such
numbers.  But there is a  potential  ambiguity  if  it's  immediately
followed by a note without any spaces. A period in that case would be
an ornament on the note.

I've sorta thought that the most general ending notation would  allow
both the open bracket and quotes, so you could write things like
  |["1,3."CD EF:|["2,4".GA Bc:|["Last time.".de f2 |]
This  make it clear which dots are to be drawn where, and also allows
for some random text under the ending bracket. Of course, just as the
bracket  chars  are rarely used, the quotes would also be rare.  Both
would be optional if the  ending  text  consists  solely  of  digits,
commas and hyphens.

Those dots in the endings don't mean anything, of course, but  a  lot
of printed music uses them for some silly reason. And the easiest way
to allow for endings like "last time" would be  to  use  quotes  like
this.  Currently, a double quote doesn't seem to be a legal character
after an open bracket, so there's no ambiguity there.

Maybe I should spend an hour implementing it ...

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