John Walsh - > One basis of misunderstanding here may be an assumption that >instrument-specific notation must be carved in stone in the language--as >u and v for upbow and downbow are now, for instance. It doesn't. (It >can't, really, for abc doesn't have the resources. In my own case, I have >to invent notation which would be quite useless to almost anyone else, and >I certainly don't want to saddle others with it.)
I agree wholeheartedly. What I don't want is to be told "You can't use character such-and-such in your new abc extension, even though it would be of enormous benefit to all users, because I'm already using it to indicate forked F on the oboe." (It's a slightly different pitch so it is musically relevant.) I think a distinction has to be made between private and public abc. If you are just using abc as an input format for your own typesetting software, then obviously you can do what you like. It doesn't affect anybody else. If you are exchanging tunes with a group of people with the same specialist interest, again, no problem. as long as you've all got access to software that will handle it. The problem comes when you go public and try to distribute tunes to a wider audience. Then I think restrictions should apply. >I figured you'd shown that that line of reasoning led to >the outlawing of instrument-specific notation in abc. Well, it didn't take much figuring since that is what I stated explicitly but it is the public aspect of abc that I was referring to. I'm not sure why you consider this mislistthropic. I want to be able to exchange tunes with everybody, regardless of what instrument they play or what software they are using. I love you all! Bryan Creer To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
