Jon Freeman wrote, > I think you are taking a pretty narrow view here. Yes, abcm2ps is excellent > but it is pretty well useless to many people I know who may like to use abc. > What you see in the abcusers list tends to be the "geeks", the ones that are > quite happy to run command line programs, are quite probably capable of > compiling from source code, etc. abcm2ps has been mentioned and praised at > Mudcat for example but I think you will find few have tried it - Why? At > least partly because the prospect of setting it up, installing ghostscript > to view graphics. etc. it just too daunting for them. > > What these users (probably the majority of PC users) want is something that > is easy to use and works on thier system. Cross platorfm isn't even an > issue...
I recently joined this list and am probably one of those sorts of users. I also know several other people in my area (New Hampshire) that use abc regularly, and I think their opinions are similar. What I care about is a notation system that's easy to use, that can be shared through e-mail, and that doesn't require complex setup. As a Mac user I use mainly BarFly and abc4mac; I've fooled around with a couple others. What I'd really like is a program like BarFly that's set up for easy high-quality printing. I also care about playing back what I've written for proofreading purposes. As a Mac user I do care about crossplatform sharing - one of my band members uses a PC and it's handy to be able to share tunes. Whether this is done with the same program isn't important. I also care about ease of use - if it gets too complicated to write out a tune with perhaps some ornamentation and chord symbols, I'd probably choose something other than abc. On the other hand, if ease of use for that basic usage can be preserved but other options are added to satisfy those with more complex needs, I'd certainly have no complaints. I think having standards is important in the sense that if I write something out on my computer using BarFly, and someone else in my band uses it on his PC using a different program, it would be nice if it looked the same. For that matter, if I write it out using BarFly and then convert it to Postscript using abc4mac, I'd like the final result to match what I saw on the screen. I hope these thoughts from a fairly basic user are of some use to those who are working on the new standards for abc. Peter To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
