> Below I will outline the most recent changes that I incorporated
> in the ABC draft standard, based on your input.
> - Changed "Accomp. Chords" to "Chord Symbols"
> - Added: programs should treat chord symbols quite liberately
Some player programs interpret these. They aren't generating symbols,
they're generating chords. So the original is better.
> %%propagate-accidentals <0 | 1>
> When set to 0, accidentals apply only to the note they're attached to.
> When set to 1, accidentals also apply to all the notes of the same pitch
> in the same octave that appear after the note that they're attached to,
> up to the end of the bar.
Please can we have "yes" and "no" instead of numbers that have to be
looked up in a manual?
I am not too happy about something this semantically basic being
dumped in a comment field. Just about any ABC program other than
a staff-notation formatter will need to have the information.
> %%writeout-accidentals <0 | 1 | 2>
> When set to 0, modifying or explicit accidentals that appear in the key
> signature field (K:) are printed in the key signature. When set to 1,
> only the accidentals belonging to the mode indicated in the K: field,
> are printed in the key signature. Modifying or explicit accidentals are
> printed in front of the notes to which they apply. When set to 2, both
> the accidentals belonging to the mode and possible modifying or explicit
> accidentals are printed in front of the notes to which they apply; no
> key signature will be printed.
>
> The default value is 0.
Again, please not numbers. And it's a bit confusing to call these
accidentals when they are in fact systematic (I'm not sure what the
correct term is and don't have a reference handy to locate it, but
I'm sure there is one).
Both of these, especially the first, would be better specified as part
of the K: field.
Perhaps one way for the second would be to put information about which
pitches were to be printed as scattered-through-the-tune accidentals
within some sort of bracket?
K:A Mixolydian % type 0 above
K:A Mixolydian [=g] % type 1
K:A [Mixolydian] % type 2
K:A [Major =g] % same effect as previous line
K:A Major =g % same effect on keysig as K:Hp
And for the first, perhaps
K:A accidentals = to-end-of-bar % the default
K:A accidentals = per-note-only % the early-music case
K:A accidentals = until-cancelled % indefinite persistence
K:A accidentals = all-octaves % allows any accidental to apply to
% all octaves of the same pitch class
K:serial accidentals = required % see almost any 2nd Vienna School score
Both put the information where no comment-stripping utility could lose it.
There may be other policies than the ones I've identified - if so, the
advantage of giving them their own keywords is that a program will know
to stop and ask a human if it hits one it doesn't know about. In this
case it isn't helpful either to guess or ignore it, except in the trivial
staff-notation-generator case (where you can just print a score with no
hint of its real meaning).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack> * food intolerance data & recipes,
Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM "Embro, Embro".
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