On Wed, 2 Jul 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I fundamentally disagree with this. I believe that > it is imperative that the standard and the software > that uses it should be isolated.
I agree with you. I had already a bit of argument about this with Phil. The standard should define an abstract music representation format, that does not depend on the actual applications that use it. Application dependent meta information such as "page width," "font colour," "midi track no" could also be standardized, but in a meta standard that is separate and does not interfere with the abstract ABC standard. The ABC standard itself should only deal with purely musical elements. Compare it to the situation on the web: HTML/XML deals with the structured information itself, CSS/XSL deals with layout. In fact, the %%-notation and format files serve already as a sort of stylesheet. Please take these conceptual differences into account when writing the upcomming standard. > No individual programme needs to implement the whole > standard. Programmes aimed at western folk musicians > may not need some of the complexities of classical > music (or Klezmer or Persian). And the other way round---classical music programs may not want to deal with e.g. bagpipes or guitar tablature notation. Therefore I think the ABC standard should be highly modular; ABC software should be able to implement a minimal amount of ABC in a well defined way that is still standard compliant. The software developer is then able to clearly indicate which ABC modules are supported and which not. Stuff such as bagpipe notation, modal key signatures, microtonal accidentals, tablature support could go in separate modules that are optional. In this way it will still be possible to extend ABC with useful features, without requiring that they should be implemented by all programs. Only programs that want to deal with "everything that's out there on the web," should be able to handle both bagpipes notation and microtonal subtleties. Other programs can specialize. Groeten, Irwin Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~* Chazzanut Online: http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
