It seems to me like extensibility is abc's Achilles' heel. Ten years ago it made sense to be vague -- nobody really knew how it would be used. It was more of a "suggestion" than a standard. We have enough experience now to create a real standard for folk music, which is what Abc was intended for in the first place.
If we define Abc 2.0 as a rigid and non-extensible format, there's still AbcPlus, which should keep that name (or Abc+). You'd use Abc as an interchange format and Abc+ as a composer's and arranger's tool. I've been working on an Abc 2.0 proposal, which is a stripped-down version of 1.6. Amongst other things, I removed most of the headers (notably A-G, X and Z, to avoid confusion with notes and rests). I admit it's a little radical :) http://bespin.org/~tom/abc2-tcn.txt Tom Novelli P.S. I'm working on an Abc viewer for Linux/svgalib.. it could be adapted to Windows as a replacement for Abc2win - then there'd be no excuses :) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
