Tom Novelli writes: | I think I'd better rethink my proposal, since (as expected) it's been | soundly rejected by several folk-tune collectors whose support is needed. | I have ideas for a better format (IMHO) for transcribing tunes; besides | correcting some "mistakes" in ABC and borrowing a few things from NMD, it | would look more like a programming language... but I can convert it to ABC | for public consumption.
Well, I for one would like to publicy encourage this. ABC is a fairly good notation, for what it is. But there are things that probably can't be done with it, without losing its primary role as a notation that's typable and readable by humans. Of course, if you're going to do this, you might want to take a good look at LilyPond first. You may decide that they've already done much of what you want. The practical approach may be to join that crowd. Or maybe we do want an intermediate notation that keeps as much of ABC's accessibility without worrying overly much about being very compatible. There is a lot of possibility here. This should be done in a separate discussion, however, maybe with a new mailing list. And check this list occasionally, so you can keep notifying people of the new effort. It may take some of the pressure off ABC to be all things to all musicians. Also, if it has a more obscure name than "ABC", it might be easier to find on the big search sites. Ask any search site about "abc music" if you don't know what I mean. "ABC" was a very unfortunate choice for a name. | Pretend I never said anything about header fields or any other radical | changes. What's more important are some constraints: | 1) Something we can all agree on | 2) Simplicity rather than completeness | 3) Unambiguous notation (certain informational fields notwithstanding) | 4) No extensions except within %% comments | and, | 5) A separate format (like AbcPlus) for music that doesn't fit these | contraints. The first point may be hopeless. For example, when I checked out ABC+, one of the first things I came across was the comment that it was designed with the needs of Western/European music in mind. My immediate reaction was "Well, forget about it then". A brief study of suggestions for extending ABC shows that many of the perceived limitations come from people who are playing music outside this set of traditions. The World Music crowd has discovered ABC, as has the Early Music crowd, and they both find it useful. But there are some things we'd like added ... | Is this too much to hope for? Probably. You're talking to a gang of musicians, you know. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
