[abcusers] Re: About the choice of '!'

[Bryancreer]

Irwin Oppenheim wrote -

>Using ! and !..! in one and the same
>tune may lead to disaster if you make a small typo. So,
>while "!" should definitely be supported, I encourage
>you to support "*" as well.

It just seems to make a messy situation more complicated.  You are still going to have to handle ! and !....! so it brings no benefit.  Whatever clever heuristics you come up with, there is no getting away from the fact that the dual use of ! is very unsatisfactory.  Try and think about from the point of view of the ordinary user presented with this stuff.  Let's look for the most practical way of solving it.

abc2win is only obsolete in the sense that it is not being maintained.  There is a large body of abc notation that uses it, it has many users and it is still available and becaues it is easily accessible to non-geeks it will continue to get taken up.

As far as I can tell, !...! is much less widely used, the collections that use it and the software that implements it are still maintained.  It could be changed.  I hear the cry "Why should we?"  I reply "For the greater good of abc."

This may seem like letting Jim Vint "get away with it" but if I find someone blocking my way on the pavement, I ask them to move; if my way is blocked by a dead dog, I walk round it.  That doesn't mean that I respect the dog more than the person, I'm just facing up to practical realities.

Bryan Creer