RE: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it ...

[Don Whitener]

Wil,

I checked your web site, and no mention is made of having tested or running 
Skink under Windows XP.  I would imagine that you have had some feedback by 
now regarding the capability of Skink with Win XP Pro, and could you 
comment on this, please.  As a side, someone told me that XP has a built-in 
JRE.  Do you have any knowledge of this?  Would separate installation of 
JRE still be necessary?  I have dug around a bit at Microsoft, but have not 
yet found an answer.

Regards,
Don
Wil Macaulay said:
A gentle reminder: Five Line Skink runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, (as
long as you have Java 1.3 or better) is free (as in beer) and does 
(optionally) display the
notes as you type.



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RE: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Wil Macaulay]

 
A gentle reminder: Five Line Skink runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, (as
long as you have
Java 1.3 or better) is free (as in beer) and does (optionally) display the
notes as you type.

not (yet) open source, however.

wil

-Original Message-
From: Bert Van Vreckem
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 7/4/03 10:18 AM
Subject: Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write
it...

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Bert Van Vreckem wrote -
>>However, a 'live' 
>>conversion to sheet music while I'm typing ABC would be nice. But very

>>difficult to implement, I imagine.
> 
> That's exactly what Abacus does.  Version 1 is available from 
> http://www.abacusmusic.co.uk/ but hang around, maybe just for a few
days, and version 2 will 
> be out.  This will be shareware; price to be decided.  After the
hundreds of 
> hours I've spent writing it, I think I'm entitled to a little beer
money.  I've 
> no moral objection to being payed as a musician either if the
opportunity 
> arises.

Well Bryan, I'm afraid I can't even use it. I'm one of them Linux
people...

-- 
Bert Van Vreckem 
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and
oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital
ingredient in beer. -- Dave Barry

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Re: [abcusers] Solution for ! notation?

[Laura Conrad]

> "Jeff" == Jeff Bigler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Jeff> I would find it particularly useful to have an explicit
Jeff> linebreak command that would override the "continue all line
Jeff> ends (append '\')" option to the abc2ps-like programs.
Jeff> Usually, I want the program to just decide where to put the
Jeff> line breaks, with a few rare exceptions.

I feel the same way about having the program figure it out.  But I
find when I'm writing lilypond, which has both  \break and \noBreak
commands, I use \noBreak much more often.  That is, usually it doesn't
matter to me, but once in a while there's a line break at a clearly
undesirable place, so I say, "Don't do that," and then lily does
something more reasonable.

-- 
Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ )
(617) 661-8097  fax: (801) 365-6574 
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139


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Re: [abcusers] Solution for ! notation?

[Jeff Bigler]

> From: Eric Galluzzo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: 04 Jul 2003 19:53:11 -0400
> 
> Irwin has said, rightly as it seems to me, that both are useful.
> However, they also seem to be incompatible.  So, why not pick a symbol
> other than "!" for the latter usage [dynamics and other decorations]?
> "*" seems ideal, and quite logical, too: in emails, IRC, etc., it is
> commonly used to boldface or emote something.  Thus:
> 
> X:1
> T:Sample
> M:4/4
> L:1/8
> K:C
> *pp*CDEF GAB*fermata*c |]
> 
> If folks do not like "*" (perhaps because of the aforementioned abc2mtex
> usage), another unused character could be chosen instead.
>
> All programs, to my knowledge, that implement the !...! construct
> (abcm2ps, jcabc2ps, and abc2midi?) are under active development, to my
> knowledge.  Therefore, all of them could easily be altered to accept
> "*" as the character rather than "!" (perhaps accepting the "!" as a
> legacy construct).  We would have a rather more difficult time
> changing abc2win, since it is not open-source; and the myriad tunes
> that are already on the web could not be changed.

I agree.  Going forward, it doesn't matter which character we choose for
dynamics and other decorations.  The only concern is supporting legacy
ABC that's already out there.  I like your solution of explicitly
supporting !...! as an alternative form for the elements that are
already defined in 1.7.6.

> For the record, I have used !...! a great deal, but I would certainly be
> willing to change all my ABC to use the *...* notation instead.  I
> imagine that if we could reach a consensus on this issue, most other
> people who use this notation would be willing to do so as well.  People
> just want something that works; they do not terribly care what it is.
> Furthermore, if this were done, I could feel free to introduce "!" into
> my scores with the abc2win meaning, which could be useful at times.

I would find it particularly useful to have an explicit linebreak
command that would override the "continue all line ends (append '\')"
option to the abc2ps-like programs.  Usually, I want the program to just
decide where to put the line breaks, with a few rare exceptions.

While we're discussing !...! decorations, I'd like to revive a
suggestion I made last year for some shorter alternatives (plus some
additional decorations).  In your example (and in the 1.7.6 draft
standard), I note that *fermata* is particularly clunky and interrupts
the readability of the ABC more than I think necessary:

> X:1
> T:Sample
> M:4/4
> L:1/8
> K:C
> *pp*CDEF GAB*fermata*c |]

A little over a year ago, I suggested a list of shorter delimiters.
There were some problems with how I presented them, but I would like to
revive the suggestion with the following slightly modified list.  I'd
welcome any feedback.  I'm using the !...! notation in this list, but if
we decide to use something other than ! (such as * or +) for a
delimiter, it's easy enough to make the appropriate substitution.


Symbols not associated with a note:

!"! repeat previous bar.  (Symbol looks like a large %
taking up the whole bar.)
!"2!, !"3!, etc.  repeat previous 2 (3, etc.) bars.  (Symbol looks like
a large % sign across 2 (or 3, etc.) bars.)
!,! comma (i.e., momentary pause in the music)
!,1.5!  comma that lasts (for example) 1.5 times the default
note length (for programs that play music)
!=! "railroad tracks" (i.e., break in the music)
!=1.5!  "railroad tracks" pause that lasts (for example) 1.5
times the default note length (for programs that play
music)
!'! breath mark (apostrophe)
!c! coda symbol (a ring with a cross in it)
!|! phrase mark (vertical line in upper part of staff)
!|l!long phrase mark (extending 3/4 of way to bottom of
staff)
!|m!medium phrase mark (extending to middle of staff)
!|s!short phrase mark
!q(!beginning of cue (display notes within this delimiter as
small notes on the staff, with rests above or below)
!q)!end of cue


Symbols associated with a note:

!+! or !*!  left-hand pizzicato mark (looks like a + over the note)
!+s! or !*s!snap-pizzicato (or "Bartok" pizzicato) mark
!-! tenuto mark (dash) over/under the note
!0! through !9! display the number over/under the note head (e.g., for
fingerings).  Multiple fingerings (for chords) displayed
from top to bottom.
!th!thumb symbol (for cello thumb position)
!>! accent mark
!^! strong accent (a dark ^ over a note)
!g! glissando from the next note to the one after it
!g(!glissando starting with this note (I.e., all notes
glissandoed together until !g)! command)
!g)!glissando ending with this note (i.e., close a !g(!

Re: [abcusers] staves

[John Chambers]

Eric Galluzzo donned his asbestos suit and opined:
|
| Regarding %%staves
| --
|
| I personally find %%staves very useful, and (despite comments to the
| contrary) very intuitive.  How about adding some official variant of
| this to the standard?  It seems much more concise, and more intuitive,
| than the
|
| V:1 bracket=2
|
| type notation that abc2ps had originally introduced.  We are running out
| of letters for headers, though; how about lowercase "s"?  Thus:
|
| X:1
| T:My Choir + Organ Piece
| M:4/4
| L:1/4
| s:[1 2 3 4] {(5 6) (7 8) 9}
| K:C
| ...

Well, we could, but I think I like the %%staves better. The
reason  is  that  we  really  have  adopeed %% as a sort of
"pragma" or "metacommand" flag, and we have  a  significant
body  of  formatting  goodies  in  this notation.  It seems
cleaner to me to leave the core abc notation fairly  devoid
of  formatting  stuff,  and package it off to the side like
this.   So  %%staves  would  be  in  the  same   class   as
%%leftmargin, %%titlefont, %%indent, and the rest. They all
deal with non-musical formatting information, not with  the
music itself.

One of the standard's appendices could include  a  list  of
these,  with the general suggestion that software implement
any that are applicable.  For players, of course, they  are
all irrelevant.

What do others think?
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[abcusers] Solution for ! notation?

[Eric Galluzzo]

Folks,

After donning my asbestos suit, let me propose this alternative.  Other
people have hinted at this and perhaps even said it outright; however,
this might be a concise restatement of the point and possible solution.


Regarding !...!
---

1. abc2win introduced the "!" sign which, despite it being nonstandard
and confusing to other programs, people have generally agreed is
useful.  9-10% of tunes (i.e. lots and lots) have this construct in it.

2. abc2midi (not abcm2ps, by the way) originally introduced !...! for
dynamics, !ppp! to !fff!.  abcm2ps adopted it.  It too is useful for
symbols, dynamics, etc.  Very few tunes have this construct in it.

Irwin has said, rightly as it seems to me, that both are useful. 
However, they also seem to be incompatible.  So, why not pick a symbol
other than "!" for the latter usage?  "*" seems ideal, and quite
logical, too: in emails, IRC, etc., it is commonly used to boldface or
emote something.  Thus:

X:1
T:Sample
M:4/4
L:1/8
K:C
*pp*CDEF GAB*fermata*c |]

If folks do not like "*" (perhaps because of the aforementioned abc2mtex
usage), another unused character could be chosen instead.

All programs, to my knowledge, that implement the !...! construct
(abcm2ps, jcabc2ps, and abc2midi?) are under active development, to my
knowledge.  Therefore, all of them could easily be altered to accept "*"
as the character rather than "!" (perhaps accepting the "!" as a legacy
construct).  We would have a rather more difficult time changing
abc2win, since it is not open-source; and the myriad tunes that are
already on the web could not be changed.

For the record, I have used !...! a great deal, but I would certainly be
willing to change all my ABC to use the *...* notation instead.  I
imagine that if we could reach a consensus on this issue, most other
people who use this notation would be willing to do so as well.  People
just want something that works; they do not terribly care what it is.
Furthermore, if this were done, I could feel free to introduce "!" into
my scores with the abc2win meaning, which could be useful at times.


Regarding U:


Someone else has stated both of these points before me, but I do take
the view that the !...! construct is essential, for the following
reasons:

1. It is very possible to use more than 19 symbols (H..Z) in one file. 
For example, I could very easily use !! through !!, !sfz!, !<(!,
!<)!, !>(!, !>)!, !fermata!, !tenuto!, !wedge!, !trill!, and !0! through
!4! in a single piece.  That's 24 already.

2. Some of the symbols are much more easily understood as their expanded
form than as a single-letter redefined symbol.  For example, if I see
!pp! in a tune, I know that it means pianissimo.  If I see S, I have no
idea.  Again, if I see !1! I know it's a fingering.  If I see Q, I have
no idea.

Having said that, Phil has made the very good point that these symbols
clutter up the tune if used very often.  So I can also see the utility
of the U: construct, regardless of whether in Phil's fashion (U:T =
trill) or in the fashion of the draft standard (U:T = !trill!).  I
personally favor the latter, since it seems more straightforward; but I
also understand that there may be a significant amount of ABC out there
using the first form already, and very little using the latter.

So: how about that we agree that "U:T = trill" type notation is
acceptable, and put into the standard?  We could simply state that it is
a symbol binding, or redefinition, or whatever we want to call it.  It
would apply to player programs as well as tadpole-generating programs. 
The BarFly definition of U:, so I gather, is somewhat broader; but this
is at least a least common denominator that covers most common uses of
U:.  I think that this notation should satisfy Phil, Jack, etc., since
it is compatible with BarFly; and it should satisfy John, Irwin, etc.,
since it is close "in spirit" to U:T = !trill!.


Regarding %%staves
--

I personally find %%staves very useful, and (despite comments to the
contrary) very intuitive.  How about adding some official variant of
this to the standard?  It seems much more concise, and more intuitive,
than the

V:1 bracket=2

type notation that abc2ps had originally introduced.  We are running out
of letters for headers, though; how about lowercase "s"?  Thus:

X:1
T:My Choir + Organ Piece
M:4/4
L:1/4
s:[1 2 3 4] {(5 6) (7 8) 9}
K:C
...

Any takers? :)

- Eric


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Re: [abcusers] Re: abc and microtonality

[John Walsh]

Phil taylor wrote

>Buddha Buck wrote:
>
>>start at the beginning of the expanded text.  Phil mentioned a ~n3
>>macro, that would perform a roll the way a piper would.  But I can
>>easily see there being more than one alternative method of playing that
>>someone might want to notate as ~n3, in the same piece.
>
>I can't actually do that for ~ at the moment, because I haven't included
>the tilde in the list of symbols which can be reassigned (only H..Z).
>

There *are* several ways to play rolls on some instruments, of
course, and sometimes you'd play them differently in successive places for
variation--pipers often do it in crans (type of roll on D and E) for
instance. In most cases, one symbol will do for all.  Unfortunately, in
the very small number of cases where the difference is important, such as
in transcriptions, it is *very* important.  But then, the abcer could just
write an ~n4 macro and assign it a different letter.

But let me segue into a side issue.

The " ~ " was originally specifically assigned to a roll, which is
pretty much specific to Irish---or at least British Isles---music. It
isn't so much a decoration as a particular way of playing several melody
notes.  (People who write "DGG2" when they mean "DG~G2" in a typical reel
are doing violence to the tune; worse still, some even play it that way.  
Much better to write and play "DGGG".)  It is not a turn, even when it has
the same notes in the same order, since some are graces and some not.  
Sounds completely different.  The use of the turn symbol for it is
natural, I guess, but misleading.  Breathnach's roll symbol (looks like a
fermata with the dot missing) is the usual symbol now, at least in the
books I have at hand.  (It's available on abc2ps and abcm2ps, but you have
to change something in the code before compiling to get it.  Used to be
DECO_IS_ROLL, but I think the latest version has changed this.)  It's
instrument-specific: Breathnach gives a table in Ceol Rince na hEireann
which gives the roll as played on fiddles, accordions, flutes and pipes.

So---I'm lobbying developers of abc staff music to add
that symbol, along with an option to make it the default for " ~ ".

Cheers,
John Walsh

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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[John Walsh]

John Chambers writes:

>Bryan Creer writes:
>| John Chambers wrote -
>|
>| >BTW, a year or so back, I had my tune finder's search bot  count  the
>| >tunes  that  seemed  to come from abc2win.
>| >
>| >Maybe I should revive that code and do another count ...
>|
>| Could you count the tunes that use "!!" ?
>
>
>Since the code scans each tune, I can count anything that I
>can  write  a perl pattern for. 
>

While checking that, you might also check for "*" at the line
ends.  Abc2mtex used for that a right-justified line break. It became
nearly superfluous when MusixTeX was introduced, but it's still mentioned
in the 1.6.1 docs.  I know I used it on some session tune files I put on
the web in '94.  (Of course, it won't be in that many tunes since it had
to be entered by hand, as opposed to having the program automatically add
it.)

Cheers,
John Walsh

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[abcusers] Re: abcusers-digest V1 #920

[Jeffrey Hurd]

> Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 01:09:03 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Jeffrey Hurd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [abcusers] please don't unsubscribe
>
> Please excuse me, but i sort of deleted the address
> of
> the person i was corresponding with concerning this
> matter.
>
> Since everything we've doesn't work, perhaps i
should
> remain on the list.


Don't worry, normally i'm pretty harmless, normally

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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Henrik Norbeck]

John Chambers wrote:
> BTW, a year or so back, I had my tune finder's search bot  count  the
> tunes  that  seemed  to come from abc2win (because of the ! chars, or
> because they had a "% ... abc2win" comment). It came to between 9 and
> 10%  of the tunes.  It probably is the numeric leader (since the true
> leader is "tunes created using any of a zillion text  editors"),  but
> it's not anywhere approaching a majority.

But that's not a good way to see how many people actually 
produce their tunes using abc2win, because 90% of abc2win 
users probably never inserted a hard line break in a tune, and 
maybe didn't even know it was possible.
That's why I don't like the current abc standard for line breaks, 
because mostly hard line breaks are not needed.


Henrik Norbeck, Stockholm, Sweden
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.norbeck.nu/ My home page
http://www.norbeck.nu/abcmus/  AbcMus player program
http://www.norbeck.nu/abc/ >1900 ABC tunes
http://www.norbeck.nu/blackthorn Irish trad music band
http://www.rfod.se/folklink/   Links to Swedish trad music
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Re: [abcusers] Re: abc and microtonality

[Phil Taylor]

I wrote:

>now you can write three different macros to specify how the three different
>trills represented in the abc by T, U and V are to be played.  Turn the macros
>off for display purposes and they will all be represented as a trill, turn them
>off for playing and each will play in the specified manner.

Oops.

For "off" in the last line read "on" :-(

Phil Taylor


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Re: [abcusers] Re: abc and microtonality

[Phil Taylor]

Buddha Buck wrote:

>>  The confusion in abc comes from the fact that there are a couple
>>of types of macros (or "macro-like entities") floating around:  First,
>>Phil Taylor's Barfly macros seem to fit the Hacker's definition nicely.
>>(Even his transposable macros fit, since the definition allows arguments,
>>and these take a note as an argument.)
>>
>I'm not sure I like the syntax 100%, since it distinguishes a particular
>letter as "the" argument.  Is there a way to write a Phil Taylor macro
>that uses an 'n' in the name of the macro?

Yes, this is one aspect of the syntax which bothers me too - you can't
use the letter n in the target string of a static macro, or use it
more than once in a transposing macro.  Intuitively though, the use
of consecutive alphabetical letters centred round a letter in the middle
of the alphabet, and the association between "n" and "any" was irresistable.
I haven't found this to be a problem in practice, but perhaps I ought
to allow the use of an escape, e.g. \n for those cases where the n is to
be taken literally, rather than to mean "any note".


>There is a lot of possibilities for combinations thereof, especially if
>it was written that during the macro-expansion phase, parsing would
>start at the beginning of the expanded text.  Phil mentioned a ~n3
>macro, that would perform a roll the way a piper would.  But I can
>easily see there being more than one alternative method of playing that
>someone might want to notate as ~n3, in the same piece.

I can't actually do that for ~ at the moment, because I haven't included
the tilde in the list of symbols which can be reassigned (only H..Z).
You could, however, do this for the trill.  There are lots of ways of
playing a trill, and you might want to use several of them in the same
piece (while keeping the same printed notation for all).  You can assign
the trill to several different letters:

U: T = trill
U: U = trill
U: V = trill

now you can write three different macros to specify how the three different
trills represented in the abc by T, U and V are to be played.  Turn the macros
off for display purposes and they will all be represented as a trill, turn them
off for playing and each will play in the specified manner.

Phil Taylor


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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Phil Taylor]

>Bryan Creer writes:
>| and from ABC Music Notation: History written by a certain John Chambers -
>...
>| There is no mention that I can find of when the !...! notation was introduced
>| or when standard 1.7.6 was released as a draft but it looks as if abc2win has
>| a prior claim on "!".  I don't see how Jim Vint can be accused of "gratuitous
>| violations" of a standard that didn't even exist.
>
>Anyone have dates for these?

A scan through my abc users mailbox indicates that the 1.7 standard
was first discussed on this list in April 2000, and this included
discussion of the !...! notation.  I don't know when this was first
implemented in a program though.


>BTW, a year or so back, I had my tune finder's search bot  count  the
>tunes  that  seemed  to come from abc2win (because of the ! chars, or
>because they had a "% ... abc2win" comment). It came to between 9 and
>10%  of the tunes.  It probably is the numeric leader (since the true
>leader is "tunes created using any of a zillion text  editors"),  but
>it's not anywhere approaching a majority.  It would take less work to
>convert the abc2win tunes to the standard.  The best way would be  to
>produce  a new abc2win that does the conversion automatically.  If it
>has some useful new features (inline key changes, clefs, voices),  it
>could  be  widely  adopted, and the non-conforming tunes would slowly
>fade away.  Anyone want the job?
>
>Maybe I should revive that code and do another count ...

If you can figure out a way to do it, count the number of tunes which
use the !...! construct too.  I think you will find that those account
for less than 1% of the total.

Phil Taylor


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Re: RE : [abcusers] abc2midi and other MIDI-supporting

[Forgeot Eric]

hehe, I didn't say that, only quoted it...

On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, [iso-8859-1] Forgeot Eric wrote:

> >It isn't being actively supported any more, though.
It has now a new maintainer, Seymour Shlien.

> > We discussed its bug with broken-rhythms constructs
> > what, two years ago?

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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Bert Van Vreckem]

Bernard Hill wrote:
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Bert Van Vreckem
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
Bernard Hill wrote:

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, A.M. Kuchling
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
* Programming is fun.
Not when you do it for a living.
Good grief! How can you possibly do something for a living that you 
don't like to do?
"Fun" was the word. Not "enjoy".

When you *have* to do it to make ends meet it takes the fun out of it.
Ask anyone who has turned a hobby into a living.
Well, here I am. I've been programming for fun since I was 12 or so and 
when I graduated (Computer Science, that figures), I started working as 
a Java developer in a software company. I thoroughly enjoyed my work 
there (okay, except maybe on the days when deadlines were coming closer 
and I was hunting down some bloody annoying bugs). I often asked myself 
how it was possible for anyone to have so much fun and actually being 
payed for it (quite well, too, in those 'new economy- days). Now I'm a 
CS lecturer, and my feelings about this job are the same.

When I did something else for a living in the evenings I wrote software
because I enjoyed the fun of doing so.
Now in the evenings I don't write software for fun. I join in musical
activities instead.
Same here, mate! I don't have time to write software in my free time. My 
motivation to release any software that I should write as open source is:

- Almost all the software I use is open source, written by people that 
gave it away for whatever reason. By giving away, I can return the favour.
- I enjoy being able to help out people.
- Money is not an issue for me, because ("AHA! Didn't I say so?", I can 
hear you say ;-)) I have a job and I get payed.

But as far as not enjoying your work, my father once said to me "Son, if
you enjoy 25% of the work you do you are a very lucky man".
Well, I've always considered myself an *extremely* lucky man, so there 
you go...

However, I do understand your point of view. You wrote the software and 
you have every right to release it under any condition you choose and to 
charge for your hard work.

Cheers,

bert

--
Bert Van Vreckem 
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and
oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital
ingredient in beer. -- Dave Barry
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[abcusers] Re: abcusers-digest V1 #920

[Dave Weinstein]

I know this was mentioned earlier, but please recall that some of us play from 
ABC as a score, and not as an interstitial format to be used to generate staff 
music, tablature, or MIDI files.

In fact, I find myself often going from staff music (which I can read, albeit 
slowly) to ABC (which I can read much more rapidly).

For me at least, to the extent that the 2.0 standard sacrifices human 
readability for machine formatting it becomes less useful.

Regards,
  --Dave

Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[John Chambers]

Bryan Creer writes:
| John Chambers wrote -
|
| >BTW, a year or so back, I had my tune finder's search bot  count  the
| >tunes  that  seemed  to come from abc2win.
| >
| >Maybe I should revive that code and do another count ...
|
| Could you count the tunes that use "!!" ?

Since the code scans each tune, I can count anything that I
can  write  a perl pattern for.  A search does take several
days (mostly due to the time spent making and breaking  TCP
connections),  and  I  usually run it twice a month.  A run
just finished a couple days ago. So we're not talking about
fast  turnaround  here.   But I have added an assortment of
counts like this, just out of curiosity.  Then I  say  "How
'bout dat." and delete the code.

Usually the numbers come with disclaimers. Thus, I have the
three books of the O'Neill's Project on my web site.  A lot
of them were done by people using abc2win, of course. But I
ran   them   through   a   script   to   do   some   simple
canonicalization, to try to make the  abc  as  standard  as
possible. So they mostly show no signs of what software was
used to do the transcription.  This probably decreases  the
abc2win  count  by  an unknown amount.  Similar disclaimers
would apply to any other such count.

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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Forgeot Eric]

>This is the wrong way to look at it.  abc2win is barely being
>maintained, but tunes created with its aid are the largest single
>corpus on the web.  It's the tunes you need to care about, not
>the software.

ok, I guess that *almost* all of those tunes are from folk
tradition. Do you honestly think we can live with or without those
line breaks ? Since this fashion was introduced by abc2win (I
started learning and discovering abc with it and I'm grateful to
this software) and abc2win doesn't support multivoice and advanced
features, I strongly doubt it will be very annoying if the future
softwares "miss" this feature.
So far I haven't found that many tunes with ! for line break (yes,
I collect them all). Btw the first one I found is this one (it's
just an example, and contrary to what I said it's not folk music)
: 

X: 3
T:Foots Minuet. BC.03
M:3/4
L:1/4
R:Minuet
O:England
A:x
N:There was a Samuel Foote,1720-1777, wit,playwright,and
actor,just like
N:in Blackadder!
Z:vmp.John Bagnall
K:D
a f a | g2 f | e d e | f/e/f/g/f/g/ | a f a | "tr"g2 f | e d e |
f3 :|!:
f f f |e/d/e/f/ e |  g g g | f/e/f/g/ f | a/g/f/g/a/b/ | "tr"g2 f
| d/e/
 f e
 | d3 |]

(from village music...)

I processed it in abc2win (yes I still have it :) ) to see the
difference with it and without it. I don't think it's showing too
much disrespect for the transcriver to "forget" this line break :
probably 90% of line break are for showing a new part (can be done
with P: instead). 
In case of classical / baroque etc. partition, it can be usefull,
it's less the case in trad. folk music. It's not vital.
Can someone find a counter example ?

>There are very few existing files using the abcm2ps !...!
construct
>compared with the number that use ! as a terminator.

>From the demonstration we got recently, the !code! and ! will
always be incompatible. I don't find !code! so great to enter, but
it can be usefull, much more usefull than this kind of line break.
I think the tunes using !...! notation provide more "informations"
in themself with those !...! than the line break to emphasize a
new part.

If some programmers can be smart enought to include in their
software an option (checkbox to emulate the old abc2win option :)
)to support this "!" line break, why not. But it shouldn't be the
only option to write it.
I remember the * symbol was ought to mean justification. I found
few applications that support it. Why not consider this one as a
new line break notation ? I don't think it's used somewhere else.
!br! could also be used :)


>Better to let
>abcm2ps have & for whatever it wants to do with a new character,
>since source readability doesn't seem to be an issue for people
who
>use it.

hmm, that's your opinion... I personally do type all my abc by
hand...
but I can say on the other hand I don't mind rediscuss the !...!
to an other kind of notation. +...+ wouldn't annoy me for example,
or even a complete way to symbolise this. Why not the macros the
way Barfly implement them ?, if it's possible to use them for such
notation, and if it doesn't give a unreadable result as the U:
does (I still prefer a !...! notation than some I J etc. mixing
with notes written with letters). I've managed to install a mac
emulator and I tried BarFly yesterday. I'll try that macro thing,
to see how it can be used.



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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[John Chambers]

Bernard Hill writes:
| In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes
| >while I'm one man in my back bedroom, the odd glitch might slip through.
|
| Yes. Of course I am in the same position.
|
| I've tried using beta testers but they are rarely fierce enough.
|
| So I fix bugs free and within hours normally: and the customers get a
| free and immediate upgrade.

That's one of the main  reasons  that  both  shareware  and
open-source  software  are usually superior to what the big
companies produce.  That, plus the fact that the developers
are usually also expert users.

Recently, there have been a lot of discussions of the  fact
that commercial software is usually so crappy compared with
what the "nobodies" produce.  I've never thought there  was
any mystery there at all.  In almost all corporate software
development projects, I've been purposely  kept  away  from
the users.  It's obvious to me what the result will be.

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Re: RE : [abcusers] abc2midi and other MIDI-supporting software

[I. Oppenheim]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, [iso-8859-1] Forgeot Eric wrote:

> >It isn't being actively supported any more, though.
It has now a new maintainer, Seymour Shlien.

> > We discussed its bug with broken-rhythms constructs
> > what, two years ago?

I quote from the changelog:

<<
2003 April 12
abc2midi assumes the ratio of 2:1 for long/short notes
in broken rhythms specified with angle brackets (eg.
c>d), Though this can be changed using the %%MIDI ratio
command, it is inconvenient for many users since it is
necessary to edit each tune in the abc file in order to
effect this change. A new command parameter -RS (ratio
standard) changes default ratio to 3:1 which is the
standard music notation. The new parameter still allows
the %%MIDI ratio command to override the default. The
change was incorporated in event_init() of store.c.
>>

It would still be better if this -RS parameter would be
on by default, since the default behaviour is a
violation of the ABC standard, but at least this new
parameter exists.

Seymour, can it be completely fixed?


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] Re: abc and microtonality

[I. Oppenheim]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, Buddha Buck wrote:

Thank you Buddha; I think it's a nice summary of the
three different symbol manipulation facilities we're
dealing with.

> 1) "long macros" -- Phil Taylor's m: macros.  These
> are prefixed in the ABC music with a special
> character, like ~, or @ or something, and can,
> through some syntax put, take an argument specifying
> a musical note

> 2) "single-character macros" -- The infamous
> U:X=!...! macros, but perhaps repackaged in a saner
> form.  Pure text substitution, no arguments. The most
> common use will probably be for specifying unusual
> ornamentations not otherwise covered in the ABC
> standard, but could concievably be used for other
> things as well.

> 3) "escapes" -- abc2mtex TeX macro facility, but
> generalized.  Some sort of syntax to indicate that
> the following code should be sent directly to the
> underlying back-end processor, not processed by ABC
> directly.

> I'd not call that a "macro" feature, but rather an
> "escape" feature.  (There's a better, more proper
> word for it that I can't think of at 6am.)

I guess it's called a "Backend Interface"; it is
comparable to inline assemby in C.

As you indicated yourself, such a feature is also
implemented in abcm2ps, with the %%deco directive: it
allows you to assign postscript code to a new !...!
symbol, which in turn can be bound to one of the free
available letters if the user so desires.

You can view sample output made with %%deco as well as
the corresponding ABC code on my website:
http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/abc/deco.html


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] codepages

[John Chambers]

Bernard Hill writes:
| In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, David Webber
| <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
| >
| >From: "Bernard Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| >> >Or even English: The First Noël
| >>
| >> That would be French. In English it's "The First Nowell".
| >
| >Well  "Chloë" then.
| >
| >I have Spike Jones's magnificent recording somewhere and I'm sure
| >the title is spelled like that :-)
|
| And "rôle" is one of my hobbyhorses :-)

My favorite has always been the mispeling of "résumé"
as "resumé".  ;-)

(But I think that "misspell" should always be mispelt.)


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RE : [abcusers] abc2midi and other MIDI-supporting software

[Forgeot Eric]

>It isn't being actively supported any more, though.  We discussed
>its bug with broken-rhythms constructs what, two years ago? 
getting
>the nearest I've ever seen us get to total consensus, and even
though
>fixing it was a matter of altering one numeric constant in the
source,
>it hasn't been done.

no, it's not a bug, but a thing done on purpose. Personnaly I
don't think it was a good idea to make it a standard.
I've written a message here some years ago about this issue, it's
easy to recompile old sources of abc2midi using in the file
store.c :

  ratio_a = 2;
  ratio_b = 6;

(6 instead of 4, which made the Hornpipe rythm)

so broken rythm is now "correct" for all sort of music, and I can
use it by default instead of typing in each tune "%%MIDI ratio 3
1".

I say the old sources, because I think with the new maintainer of
the sources, it as been made as default.


Btw talking about abc2midi and abcm2ps :

>Its sound output wasn't that good last I heard, and I haven't got
>a computer that can run it.  Nor is it much good at transposing
>tunes, cataloguing tune files or importing MIDI.

I don't think abc2midi can catalogue tunes, but so far it can
transpose tunes and import midi  :) And with some perl script it's
possible to renumber tunes and probably list them as well.


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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Bert Van Vreckem
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>Bernard Hill wrote:
>> In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, A.M. Kuchling
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>>>* Programming is fun.
>> Not when you do it for a living.
>
>Good grief! How can you possibly do something for a living that you 
>don't like to do?
>

"Fun" was the word. Not "enjoy".

When you *have* to do it to make ends meet it takes the fun out of it.
Ask anyone who has turned a hobby into a living.

When I did something else for a living in the evenings I wrote software
because I enjoyed the fun of doing so.

Now in the evenings I don't write software for fun. I join in musical
activities instead.

But as far as not enjoying your work, my father once said to me "Son, if
you enjoy 25% of the work you do you are a very lucky man".




Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] Modularity and customisability

[ANewman110]

Hi Calum, I was thinking along these same lines.  I like the idea of keeping the ABC 
'level 1' standard somewhat small, but allowing (OK, I'll say it) scripting languages 
to manipuate them to produce more complex output.

I think to produce the kind of output our Lilypond friends are used to, you really 
need to go beyond nouns and into the world of verbs.
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Re: [abcusers] Thoughts on where ABC goes...

[ANewman110]

I've thought about proposing an ABC interpreter language.  The idea is that you would 
have the ability to display, play and print ABC files, and also have some run-time 
control over what is done, e.g. loop, text processing, etc.  Such a language would be 
compatible with any ABC standard, and possibly even handle the current situation of 
several contratictory standards.

What's prevented me from doing it so far is that I'd like to get a working version 
going first. I just don't think the world needs yet another music notation standard 
without anybody willing to go out and implement it.  Ultimately this is where I'm 
going with iabc.
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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[ANewman110]

iabc already runs and compiles under Windows and Linux.  It uses wxWindows 
(www.wxwindows.org) as a GUI.


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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Bryancreer]

John Chambers wrote -

>BTW, a year or so back, I had my tune finder's search bot  count  the
>tunes  that  seemed  to come from abc2win. 
>
>Maybe I should revive that code and do another count ...

Could you count the tunes that use "!!" ?

Bryan Creer

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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Bryancreer]

Bert Van Vreckem wrote -

>Well Bryan, I'm afraid I can't even use it. I'm one of them Linux people...

When I've made my fortune from the Windows version I'll see about rewriting 
for other platforms.  (Or employ somebody else to do it.)

There's not much point in me providing the source code because it's in Visual 
Basic (and anyway, it's MINE).

Skink works in a similar way doesn't it?  Somebody else was working on the 
same sort of idea a few months ago.

Bryan Creer

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Re: [abcusers] abc2win

[Bryancreer]

Irwin Oppenheim wrote -

>As far as I could check, the source code of abc2win has
>not been released. So how could we do that?

Well, you could try being nice to Jim Vint and inviting him to join in the 
standards process.

Bryan Creer

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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Bert Van Vreckem]

Bernard Hill wrote:
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, A.M. Kuchling
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
* Programming is fun.
Not when you do it for a living.
Good grief! How can you possibly do something for a living that you 
don't like to do?

--
Bert Van Vreckem 
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and
oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital
ingredient in beer. -- Dave Barry
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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Bert Van Vreckem]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Bert Van Vreckem wrote -
However, a 'live' 
conversion to sheet music while I'm typing ABC would be nice. But very 
difficult to implement, I imagine.
That's exactly what Abacus does.  Version 1 is available from 
http://www.abacusmusic.co.uk/ but hang around, maybe just for a few days, and version 2 will 
be out.  This will be shareware; price to be decided.  After the hundreds of 
hours I've spent writing it, I think I'm entitled to a little beer money.  I've 
no moral objection to being payed as a musician either if the opportunity 
arises.
Well Bryan, I'm afraid I can't even use it. I'm one of them Linux people...

--
Bert Van Vreckem 
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and
oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital
ingredient in beer. -- Dave Barry
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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes
>
>Really, I was just covering my own backside.  I implied that because I would 
>like some payment for my efforts I would be more thorough than if I was giving 
>the software away but I have limited resources and, with the best will in the 
>world, I can't guarrantee that it will be bug free.  When I have built my 
>software publishing empire, I'll be able to afford teams of full time testers 
>but 
>while I'm one man in my back bedroom, the odd glitch might slip through.

Yes. Of course I am in the same position.

I've tried using beta testers but they are rarely fierce enough.

So I fix bugs free and within hours normally: and the customers get a
free and immediate upgrade.


Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] codepages

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, David Webber
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>
>From: "Bernard Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>> >Or even English: The First Noël
>>
>> That would be French. In English it's "The First Nowell".
>
>Well  "Chloë" then.
>
>I have Spike Jones's magnificent recording somewhere and I'm sure
>the title is spelled like that :-)
>

And "rôle" is one of my hobbyhorses :-)

Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] Re: abc and microtonality

[John Chambers]

John Walsh wrote:
>   First, in my on-line Websters, a macro is defined as:
>
>macro n, pl macros [short for macroinstruction] (1959): a single computer
>instruction that stands for a sequence of operations.

One serious problem with this definition is that all  subroutine  and
function mechanisms satisfy it. There are several ways one can take a
chunk of code, give it a name, and then just type the name to make it
happen. It's important (to programmers) to distinguish them, but this
definition groups them all under the term "macro".

The term "macro" was really invented as a way  of  describing  things
(assembler opcodes originally) that are expanded in place rather than
invoked by a "call and return" function mechanism.   A  macro  looked
like  an instruction, but was replaced by a sequence of instructions.
A subroutine is a remote chunk of code that is invoked  by  a  "call"
instruction.

Of course, the computer industry has always  played  fast  and  loose
with  terminology.   Consider the now-common term "in-line function".
You'd think there would be no reason for such a term, since  this  is
the usual meaning of "macro", which has two fewer syllables. But this
would be ignoring the well-established tradition of obfuscating  your
terminology at every opportunity.

(Actually, at least in C compilers, there is sort of a distinct sense
of  "in-line  function".  A "macro" converts chunks of code to C.  An
"in-line function" gets translated directly to assembly code.  But it
is  still  really  just  a  kind of macro.  The distinction is rather
esoteric to everyone except a programmer trying to get the  last  bit
of speed out of a program.)

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[abcusers] abc2win

[I. Oppenheim]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, John Chambers wrote:

> BTW, a year or so back, I had my tune finder's search bot  count  the
> tunes  that  seemed  to come from abc2win (because of the ! chars, or
> because they had a "% ... abc2win" comment). It came to between 9 and
> 10%  of the tunes.

Good to have some actual figures!

> The best way would be to produce a new abc2win that
> does the conversion automatically. Anyone want the
> job? Maybe I should revive that code and do another
> count ...

As far as I could check, the source code of abc2win has
not been released. So how could we do that?


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] Abc levels

[ANewman110]

The trick would be to make the levels backward compatible, e.g. so level 2 is a 
superset of level 1.

Also, what you are describing sounds more like 'packages' than levels.  So maybe one 
of the levels understands packages, where another understands words and voices, etc.
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Re: [abcusers] codepages

[David Webber]

From: "Bernard Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


> >Or even English: The First Noël
>
> That would be French. In English it's "The First Nowell".

Well  "Chloë" then.

I have Spike Jones's magnificent recording somewhere and I'm sure
the title is spelled like that :-)

Dave
David Webber
Author of MOZART the music processor for Windows -
http://www.mozart.co.uk
Member of the North Cheshire Concert Band
http://www.northcheshire.org.uk

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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Bryancreer]

Bernard Hill wrote -

>I hope you are not implying that software sold by shareware methods is
>not as good as that sold off-the-shelf?

It's probably better in some ways.  For an analogy, if you buy your 
vegetables from your neighbour who's grown them in his back garden they are probably 
better than the ones from the supermarket but you will tolerate the occasional 
caterpillar and soil on the roots.

Really, I was just covering my own backside.  I implied that because I would 
like some payment for my efforts I would be more thorough than if I was giving 
the software away but I have limited resources and, with the best will in the 
world, I can't guarrantee that it will be bug free.  When I have built my 
software publishing empire, I'll be able to afford teams of full time testers but 
while I'm one man in my back bedroom, the odd glitch might slip through.

Bryan Creer

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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[John Chambers]

Bryan Creer writes:
| and from ABC Music Notation: History written by a certain John Chambers -
...
| There is no mention that I can find of when the !...! notation was introduced
| or when standard 1.7.6 was released as a draft but it looks as if abc2win has
| a prior claim on "!".  I don't see how Jim Vint can be accused of "gratuitous
| violations" of a standard that didn't even exist.

Anyone have dates for these?

| The fact is that both "!" as a line break and "!...!" are in use so let's
| develop a no blame culture and work out how to get round it.  More to the point,
| can we try and work out  a system to make sure we all know what others are
| doing so this sort of thing doesn't happen in the future?

One of the inherent problems with all software  development  by  more
than  one  small  group  is  that  people  will  try new ideas, often
incompatible with each other, and then you get  input  using  all  of
them. If caught early, and everyone is cooperative, it's easy to pick
the winner and convert everyone else's files.  But this isn't  always
what happens.

In this case, we have an example of something that has been the  bane
of  the  computing industry since at least the late 1950s:  Even if a
lot of people agree on an "industry standard", people working on  the
market  leader systems (IBM and then Microsoft) tend to simply ignore
the standard.  "We're the standard; all you nobodies can just  follow
our  lead  or you'll have a mess on your hands." And since the market
leader usually doesn't fully document their "standard", anyone trying
to follow them has a very difficult job.

It took me a long time to grok what all those funny  !  chars  meant,
because they weren't documented anywhere, and the information I could
find was quite confusing. Were they line or staff terminators? Recent
comments  here  still  confuse  the two, but to a programmer, this is
important. I finally figured out they could just be ignored. Then the
!...!  notation came along.  This wasn't surprising, because most abc
users had never heard of abc2win's use of !, and there was no mention
of it in any abc docs. ! was an unused character, so why not use it?

This mess isn't always intended, especially when done by independents
like Jim Vint.  I think he just saw it as a bother and a waste of his
time.  But to others who can't read minds, it does often come  across
as  the  traditional  arrogance  of  the  market  leader  to industry
standards.

Well, at least in this case, there's a kludge that distinguishes  the
abc2win ! from the musical annotation !...! notation.  And this is in
the tradition of the computing industry too; kludges  like  that  are
how we usually handle the market leaders' violations of standards.

BTW, a year or so back, I had my tune finder's search bot  count  the
tunes  that  seemed  to come from abc2win (because of the ! chars, or
because they had a "% ... abc2win" comment). It came to between 9 and
10%  of the tunes.  It probably is the numeric leader (since the true
leader is "tunes created using any of a zillion text  editors"),  but
it's not anywhere approaching a majority.  It would take less work to
convert the abc2win tunes to the standard.  The best way would be  to
produce  a new abc2win that does the conversion automatically.  If it
has some useful new features (inline key changes, clefs, voices),  it
could  be  widely  adopted, and the non-conforming tunes would slowly
fade away.  Anyone want the job?

Maybe I should revive that code and do another count ...

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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[John Chambers]

Jeff Bigler writes:
|
| Another angle is the business model that a former employer of mine
| (Cygnus Solutions) used.  Cygnus sold commercial-grade support and
| development for free software.
...
| Customers could also hire Cygnus to add specific
| features or optimizations that they needed, again with development to be
| done on the time scale that companies expect for commercial software.

Indeed, and something similar could happen with any of  the
abc tools (open or closed source).  There are several music
publishers and other organizations who  are  already  using
abc.  It's likely that some of them will want some features
added to some abc tools.  The programmer may not  have  any
personal  motive  to implement them.  But I'd bet that they
could be hired to do the job.

Several peope have pointed out that a problem  with  "free"
software  is  that  things  get implemented only as someone
needs them for their own personal use.  This does  tend  to
lead  to  very practical software, since it is developed by
people  who  are  actually  using  it.   But  rarely-needed
features may not get implemented at all.

In the case of publishers, many  of  them  have  their  own
formatting rules.  It wouldn't be at all surprising to hear
that they had contracted with some of us to modify  one  or
more of the abc formatters to produce their format.

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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Richard Robinson]

On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 06:26:16AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> There is no mention that I can find of when the !...! notation was introduced 
> or when standard 1.7.6 was released as a draft but it looks as if abc2win has 
> a prior claim on "!".  I don't see how Jim Vint can be accused of "gratuitous 
> violations" of a standard that didn't even exist.
> 
> The fact is that both "!" as a line break and "!...!" are in use so let's 
> develop a no blame culture and work out how to get round it.  More to the point, 
> can we try and work out  a system to make sure we all know what others are 
> doing so this sort of thing doesn't happen in the future?

I hated abc2win's "!" usage when it appeared. ABC tunes started
appearing using some consruct I'd never heard of, never seen any
discussion of, that the software I was using just wouldn't handle.
If I wanted to look at an abc2win tune, I had to re-edit it by hand
before any of the programs I was using could make sense of it. I saw it,
and still see it, as the prime example of what a pain in the arse it is
when people implement their own bright ideas for extensions with no
concensus. It broke compatability quite horribly, and wasted manymany
hours of my time, and probably other peoples' too.

But I gather that jcabc2ps, at least, now copes with this (? I really
haven't been keeping up) so maybe I won't have to do any more re-editing.
On the assumption that I'm _able_ to use "!" as a staff-break, anywhere
in a line of abc, Jack's argument & examples make the case very strongly,
to my mind, that this is a good and useful thing to be able to do. I
might even start using it myself, if I could be sure other peoples'
software would know what it meant.

Just so long as we end up with agreement, among both people and
software, about what things mean ...

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem

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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Frank Nordberg]

Bernard Hill wrote:
...
Why are there no professional musicians who perform without being paid
for it?
Hey, I'm a professional musician, and I *do* perform without being paid 
for it quite a lot, and so do all the collegues I know!

Frank Nordberg
http://www.musicaviva.com
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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Frank Nordberg]

A.M. Kuchling wrote:
* Members of the appropriate sex like musicians.
Might be somewhat off-topic, but this reminds me of a masterclass I once 
attended - by the great classical guitarist Manuel Barrueco.

After we had bombared the maestro with questions about fingering, 
polishing nails, and the minutest technical details, he summed it all up 
 with these immortal words:
"Remember, everything we do, we do for the ladies!"

Cheers

Frank Nordberg
http://www.musicaviva.com
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Re: [abcusers] Re: My point of view on the abc standard

[Frank Nordberg]

I. Oppenheim wrote:

...

>
> I do not agree with this approach.
> A standard should document advisable behaviour, not all
> the possible errors that people make when writing ABC.
I'd say both yes and no to that.

The new standard should certainly do far more than just document common 
ABC use.

OTOH it wouldn't hurt to at least give some consideration to how people 
actually *write* their ABC, not only from a pragmatic POW (fewer 
"faulty" ABC files in circulation), but also because there might be good 
ideas there. Although it's not very common, people do occsionally have 
good reasons for doing thing the way they do. ;-)

Frank Nordberg
http://www.musicaviva.com
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[abcusers] no blame culture

[I. Oppenheim]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> The fact is that both "!" as a line break and "!...!"
> are in use so let's develop a no blame culture and
> work out how to get round it.  More to the point, can
> we try and work out a system to make sure we all know
> what others are doing so this sort of thing doesn't
> happen in the future?

  Culture

Thank you for writing this. This is the first sensible
remark I read in this whole discussion on the "!" sign:
stop the blame culture and stop it now!

  Confusion

I think most people in the discussion so far confused
two important, but independent goals:

1/ the implementation issue - how to interpret "!"
signs that are found in *legacy* code on the web. I
think that John Chambers heuristic works pretty well:

<< The heuristic when a !  is encountered is to scan
for another and count any special characters.  If any
bar-line chars ("[|:]") are spotted, it's immediately
taken as an abc2win ! and dropped. If no matching ! is
found, it's also dropped. >>

2/ the standards issue - what should be the usage of
the "!" sign in *newly* written code. I think the
solution that Henrik Norbeck came up with in his
extended BNF definition is the best. Keep using the
!...! notation for notating symbols. Use "!" to force a
linebreak, but only if it appears at the end of an
input line.

  Conclusion

To sum up: let's be a bit more flexible and respectful
on this list. Nobody can always be completely put in
the right. We need to make compromises.

But the most important thing is: *listen* to and
analyze what all the other people have said before you
give your own oppinion. This way you can prevent to
only add to the general confusion or to repeat what
have been stated numerous times before.


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] The abc standard and ~ / turns / rolls

[Calum Galleitch]

On Friday 04 July 2003 10:07 am, Jack Campin wrote:

> A full solution would need to allow new graphical elements to be
> introduced (in a platform-independent way, say as GIFs; in the worst
> case they might have to be taken from a scan of a manuscript) and
> allow their meaning to be redefinable, in case new scholarship finds
> that for some particular piece, a different set of conventions were
> really in force than those the transcriber had in mind.

May I direct you to my suggestion of a builtin scripting system? This is 
*exactly* the situation I was thinking of; the idea would be that one could 
insert a symbol called whatever, and attach drawing and playing instructions 
to it.

As an aside, a vectorial description system would be better; if there's one 
that's ideal for parsing and translation, so much the better.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Calum
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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes
> I'm not saying 
>there will be no errors but we are talking shareware not big software house.

I hope you are not implying that software sold by shareware methods is
not as good as that sold off-the-shelf?


Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] Re: abc and microtonality

[Buddha Buck]

John Walsh wrote:



Ah yes, the M word.  I think I added my own bit to the confusion,
tho not, I hope, to the flames. What is clear is that there are a couple
of definitions of "macro"  floating around. They overlap but don't
coincide; and there are a couple of different types of "macro" in abc
which fit into one definition but not the other.
The subject seems to be returning, carrying its usual confusion,
so I looked up the definitions to see what they said.
	First, in my on-line Websters, a macro is defined as:

macro n, pl macros [short for macroinstruction] (1959): a single computer 
instruction that stands for a sequence of operations.

	However, the new Hacker's dictionary defines it:

macro /mak'roh/ techspeak n.  A name (possibly followed by a formal arg
list) which is equated to a text or symbolic expression to which it is to
be expanded (possibly with the substitution of actual arguments) by a
macro expander.
	There's more---I'll get back to that---but note that there is
quite a difference in the two definitions.  Webster's definition is pretty
general while the Hacker's definition is more specific: it tells you not
only what a macro is, but how it is accomplished (by a macro expander).  
Kind of strange if you think of it---if you wanted to be really careful
(perish the thought!) you'd say that a macro was an ordered pair, macro
plus expander.  On the other hand, the hacker's definition is not limited
to "instructions," while Webster's is.  There is a third definition that
I've heard on this list: a macro is a text substitution.

Historically, the definitions aren't that different.  To someone 
programming in 1959 using a macro assembler, it was a BIG advantage to 
be able to type in a short keyword or two to put in a common idiom, 
rather than type blocks of the same code over and over again.

Likewise, to someone using the text editor TECO in the early 1970's, it 
was nice to be able to hit a single, special key and get a common 
editing idiom, rather than type long sequences of editor commands over 
and over again.  I find it amusing to hear Unixy folk complaining about 
WordPerfect and Microsoft Word adding keyboard macro capability to teir 
word-processors, when emacs started out as a macro collection for TECO.

Lisp programmers swear by their macros.  They allow, once again, common 
idioms to be typed in rather simply instead of typing on long blocks of 
code over and over again. 

All of these early uses of macros, as well as most later ones, work via 
some variation of text substitution.  The macro assembler is more "pure" 
along those lines.  The keyboard macros does the substitution as you 
type, the lisp macros manipulate parse trees instead of text directly.

Even TeX macros are really text substitution, which Knuth makes clear in 
his documentation.

I'd always understood "macro" in the Webster's sense, having run into them
principally in TeX and in keyboard macros for text editors, so I was
surprised when this usage led to confusion.  Now I understand why.
To a certain degree, the Webster sense was the original intent, with the 
Jargon file sense being the method.  However, it is a very powerful, 
flexible method, and can (and is) used for much more than simply using a 
single instruction instead of a set of them.

I once wrote a 2-pass SPARC assembler using m4, a single-pass macro package.


The jargon file goes on to say,
"Indeed the meaning has drifted enough that the collective
'macros' is sometimes used for code in any special-purpose application
control language (whether or not the language is actually translated by
text expansion), and for macro-like entities such as the 'keyboard macros'
supported in some text editors (and PC TSR or Macintosh INIT/CDEV keyboard
enhancers)."
I think that ESR is incorrect here, at least as far as distinguising 
"keyboard macros" as "macro-like entities".  Historically, keyboard 
macros have been called macros, and have worked via textual substitution 
for a long time.

	The confusion in abc comes from the fact that there are a couple
of types of macros (or "macro-like entities") floating around:  First,
Phil Taylor's Barfly macros seem to fit the Hacker's definition nicely.  
(Even his transposable macros fit, since the definition allows arguments,
and these take a note as an argument.)

I'm not sure I like the syntax 100%, since it distinguishes a particular 
letter as "the" argument.  Is there a way to write a Phil Taylor macro 
that uses an 'n' in the name of the macro?

	However, there is another kind of m-le which is used in abc2mtex,
and has been there since very early versions.  (This program might be
thought obsolete by some, but not by me, since I need these things, and
that's the only program that offers them.)  For those only familiar with
abc2ps, abc2mtex is a front end for TeX/MusiXTEX, which itself has an
extensive macro facility; MusixTeX can print out quite good staff music,
including symphonic

Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Bryancreer]

I know it is fasionable to slag off abc2win on this list (and, obviously, I'm not too keen on it or I wouldn't be writing Abacus) but can we get a little historical perspective?

>From Chris Walshaw's history of ABC on his abc home page -

>The real explosion in interest came when Jim Vint released his package abc2win 
>in September 1995. The tool was taken up by a large number of the members of 
>IRTRAD-L and abc's of tunes started appearing regularly. More recently (in February 
>1996) Michael Methfessel released abc2ps...

   and from ABC Music Notation: History written by a certain John Chambers -

>1995
>   September Jim Vint's abc2win version ___ announced for Windows 3.?. 

>1997 January Version 1.6.1 of abctmtex  This may have been the version used to >write the first ABC syntax standard, first as a narrative description, and then in BNF >format by Henrik Norbeck.

There is no mention that I can find of when the !...! notation was introduced or when standard 1.7.6 was released as a draft but it looks as if abc2win has a prior claim on "!".  I don't see how Jim Vint can be accused of "gratuitous violations" of a standard that didn't even exist.

The fact is that both "!" as a line break and "!...!" are in use so let's develop a no blame culture and work out how to get round it.  More to the point, can we try and work out  a system to make sure we all know what others are doing so this sort of thing doesn't happen in the future?

Bryan Creer

[abcusers] inaudible spaces

[Jack Campin]

>| I think it'd be difficult to avoid notation such as the x for the
>| invisible rests... I don't think it would be used in folk tune for
>| ex. so only tunes with "heavy needs" would need this, that mean
>| they would include also V: and other unsupported features in old
>| app.

One place you could use it for simple one-line tunes is in
transcriptions of the many editions that screw up upbeats.
Inserting an invisible rest could make things add up for
player programs without forcing staff-notation generators
to print anything different from what was in the original.


> Actually, I find the  y  "invisible,  unplayed"  rest  more
> useful.  For example, if you want the somewhat conventional
> comma-like phrasing/breath mark  above  the  staff,  abc2ps
> produces a fine result if you write
>  ","y
>
> This positions the symbol properly between two  notes,  and
> adds a bit of extra space.
>
> There are a  number  of  abc  thingies  that  can  only  be
> produced  above/below  a  "note".  Rests are quite sensibly
> counted as notes by most progams, so  you  can  gedt  those
> thingies isolated by attaching them to a rest.  A rest that
> is otherwise ignored is a very good tool for this.

One place this is indispensable in in Russian songs.  Almost
all of them have "v" written as a separate word; as sung, it's
assimilated to the following word, but never printed that way,
it just floats in the space between the notes.

For other uses, chances are that no two programs (or even two
successive releases of the same program) will have the same
spacing algorithm, so we have the interesting position that
while this is a feature which all programs that generate staff
notation ought to have, nobody could put a piece of ABC that
uses it on the web and expect anybody else to see it the same
way they did.  For my new flute CD-ROM, I made very heavy use
of it in getting the GIF scores to look right, but there is not
one "y" space in the ABC I released on the disk.

-
Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
 * food intolerance data & recipes,
Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM "Embro, Embro".
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[abcusers] abc2midi and other MIDI-supporting software

[Jack Campin]

>> four moribund systems which are still widely used (ABC2WIN, abcps,
>> abcmidi, and abc2mtex).
> abcmidi ? moribund ? It handles well all of my abc. I like AbcMus,
> but I'm "forced" to use abcmidi because it handles better the
> %%midi commands (for different octaves in different voices for ex.)

It isn't being actively supported any more, though.  We discussed
its bug with broken-rhythms constructs what, two years ago?  getting
the nearest I've ever seen us get to total consensus, and even though
fixing it was a matter of altering one numeric constant in the source,
it hasn't been done.

What alternate syntaxes for MIDI voices are there at present?  Neither
%%midi nor BarFly's preferred option seems ideal.


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[abcusers] The abc standard and ~ / turns / rolls

[Jack Campin]

>|> Is ~ a roll or a turn?
>| According to ABC 1.7.6, it's a roll:

One more disaster with that "standard".  The 1.6 standard said:

: Alternatively, the tilde symbol ~ represents the general  gracing
: of  a  note  which, in the context of traditional music, can mean
: different things for different instruments, for example  a  roll,
: cran or staccato triplet

which is exactly what you want a new symbol for, having just dumped
an already agreed one:

> Any Baroque musician is familiar with the convention that a '+'
> above a note means "Ornament this note somehow".  It's a generic,
> unspecific ornament symbol. I personally would like it to mean
> this in abc

~ has been around so long with its 1.6 meaning that almost every
file on the web that uses it can be assumed to have the nonspecific
semantics (which is not accidental, that's what Breathnach used it
for in "Ceol Rince na hEireann" and where Chris got the idea).  And
in this situation you have no syntactic clue to tell you if the
author might have had the redefined sense in mind.  At this point
it is WAY too late to think of imposing a new meaning on it.

In fact + doesn't always have that generic sense in Baroque music.
In English recorder music of the early 18th century it always means
a trill starting on the note above.

I brought that up a few years ago and the situation hasn't changed:
BarFly can give me the semantics I want but not the original sign,
abcm2ps's syntax can give me the graphical sign but can't represent
its meaning in a way any player program could ever interpret.  A
full solution would need to allow new graphical elements to be
introduced (in a platform-independent way, say as GIFs; in the worst
case they might have to be taken from a scan of a manuscript) and
allow their meaning to be redefinable, in case new scholarship finds
that for some particular piece, a different set of conventions were
really in force than those the transcriber had in mind.

-
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Re: [abcusers] The abc standard

[Jack Campin]

>> Over the past year or so, this group has become
>> dominated by discussion of abcm2ps;
> Probably because it is the best and least "limited" ABC implementation
> around: it implements an extensive set of features, is actively
> developed, runs on all computer platforms that we use and gives
> excellent ouput quality!

Its sound output wasn't that good last I heard, and I haven't got
a computer that can run it.  Nor is it much good at transposing
tunes, cataloguing tune files or importing MIDI.

Have you ever tried ABCMus, BarFly or Muse?


>> [a standard developer] is going to be familiar with programs which do
>> fast onscreen display of abc music, programs which play abc, programs
>> which do musical analysis or use abc for archival or database purposes
>> etc.
> Phil, this are all implementation specific issues which a standard
> should not address. As you indicated yourself, ABC is just an
> *abstract* computer representation of a computer score;

It IS a score.  Any staff notation you generate from it is a
transformation of a notation which represents *music*, not marks
on paper.  Musical analysis is just as good a way to use it as
making printable files from it.


> all that the standard should do is to define this representation in
> an abstract way. Whether the *concrete* ABC files are to be played,
> displayed, printed or analyzed is up to the end user.

It won't be if the notation has been designed to be unplayable and
unanalyzable, which is where the !...! stuff is heading.


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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Jack Campin]

> As far as I know, only abc2win has so far used ! as a line terminator,
> and the !...! extensions already exist in the 1.7.6 "draft standard",

Which is not much more than a renamed absm2ps manual.


> which most people on this list seem to agree should be the starting
> point for the new 2.0.0 standard.

If some bits of it are thrown out first.


> If this happens, I see several options for abc2win:

This is the wrong way to look at it.  abc2win is barely being
maintained, but tunes created with its aid are the largest single
corpus on the web.  It's the tunes you need to care about, not
the software.


>1) Keep ! as a line terminator and don't implement the !...!
>   extensions.  This would make abc2win a "nonstandard" implementation.

It already is in many respects.  The problem is mainly a pragmatic one
(though as I have been arguing, having ! as a line terminator allows
important things you can't do any other way).


>3) Use another character for either the escape character for either
>   extensions (e.g., +...+ instead of !...!) or as a line terminator.
>   This would also make abc2win a "nonstandard" implementation, and
>   would definitely break some (possibly many) existing ABC files.

There are very few existing files using the abcm2ps !...! construct
compared with the number that use ! as a terminator.  And since the
uses of this construct are finitely enumerable, there is no reason
why abcm2ps (or some utility supporting it) can't auto-edit them into
something else.  Since any ABC can occur between two terminators,
it would be much harder for abc2win to change its behaviour, or for
a utility to transform them automatically, even if the implementor
wanted to do such a thing (not likely).


>  I think having a unique forced line break character may well be
> useful enough to warrant using one of them.  What would folks think
> of using & for this purpose?

Look at the example I just gave.  The reason ! worked so well for
it was because it's visually unobtrusive.  & isn't.  Better to let
abcm2ps have & for whatever it wants to do with a new character,
since source readability doesn't seem to be an issue for people who
use it.

-
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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Bryancreer]

Phil Taylor wrote -

> That's the problem with live editing.  The parser has to be
> absolutely bullet-proof, as the user can hit it with absolutely
> any combination of symbols.  There is really no way you can
> test it enough either.  That's one reason why I kept BarFly
> free for several years while under development - I needed the
> whole community of users to use it and tell me about the bugs
> in order to get it to its current state.

I must admit that I have thought "If I give Abacus away free I don't have to 
worry so much about how good it is.  I'll let other people find the bugs."  
That's more or less what I did with Abacus 1.0.0.  I've done a lot of work on 
the next release so I think I'm entitled to a little recompense.  I'm not saying 
there will be no errors but we are talking shareware not big software house.

Bryan Creer

By the way, I don't seem to be getting Phil Taylor's postings direct, just 
quotes in other people's.  Is this happening to anyone else?

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Re: [abcusers] codepages

[Henrik Norbeck]

John Chambers wrote:
> Those  are  a  slightly-abbreviated  version  of  the   TeX
> notation, supported by abc2mtex and abc2ps.  What other abc
> tools implement these?

AbcMus supports a bunch of them (if you select the option for 
doing so). I could post a list later.
 
> (One thing I just noticed is that abc2ps  and  my  jcabc2ps
> don't  implement \\ as a way to get a single backslash into
> the output.  This is an oversight that should be fixed.)

AbcMus supports this.
 
> (I recently added \'y and \'Y to  the  list  that  jcabc2ps
> handles.   So  now I can do Czech lyrics.  It's interesting
> that Czech is a Latin-1 language.  How did that happen?)

Czech is NOT a Latin-1 language. It uses at least 3 non-latin-1 
characters that I know of: C with hacek, R with hacek, Z with hacek
(a hacek is an upside down ^)


Henrik Norbeck, Stockholm, Sweden
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.norbeck.nu/ My home page
http://www.norbeck.nu/abcmus/  AbcMus player program
http://www.norbeck.nu/abc/ >1900 ABC tunes
http://www.norbeck.nu/blackthorn Irish trad music band
http://www.rfod.se/folklink/   Links to Swedish trad music
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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Henrik Norbeck]

Someone wrote:
> >> According to the BNF definition
> >> http://www.norbeck.nu/abc/abcbnfx.htm
> >> The bang is NOT a line terminator

Jack Campin wrote:
> Which was a booboo on the part of whoever let that through.
> Supporting the existing corpus of tunes is *alone* more
> important than allowing an inessential idiosyncratic extension
> in one application.

The BNF definition in abcbnfx.htm was an attempt from my side to 
describe the (at that time, 1997) proposed extensions in BNF. It 
does contain the ! as a line breaker, but only at the end of a line, 
not in the middle of it. I hadn't understood until today that it was 
actually allowed in the middle of a line too.
BTW, nobody reacted to that specification for more than five years, 
so whose is the booboo?
Now I've actually made a new, much more strict BNF specification 
of Abc 2.0, see separate mail.


Henrik Norbeck, Stockholm, Sweden
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.norbeck.nu/ My home page
http://www.norbeck.nu/abcmus/  AbcMus player program
http://www.norbeck.nu/abc/ >1900 ABC tunes
http://www.norbeck.nu/blackthorn Irish trad music band
http://www.rfod.se/folklink/   Links to Swedish trad music
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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[I. Oppenheim]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, Jeff Bigler wrote:

> What would folks think of using & for this purpose?

The ampersand is already in use as a voice splitting
symbol. I hope this will be documented in the upcomming
standard.

> I.e., !mp! is not in the 1.7.6 draft standard

Good that you mentioned that. Must have been an
oversight.


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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[abcusers] Re: Abacus Run-Time Error 70

[Bryancreer]

Don wrote -

>Someone was speaking of errors, and I just found that I can consistently 
>cause a Run-time error by following these steps:
>
>1. Open an existing file.
>2. Click the 'Full ABC' button, which opens the Full ABC window and listing.
>3. Close the Full ABC window with the Windows 'X' button in the upper right 
>corner (What does Microsoft call those buttons anyway? I've 
>forgotten...)  This immediately produces an Abcus error box stating 
>"Run-time error '70': Permission denied".
>4. Click the 'OK' button in the error box (only choice), and Abacus 
>immediately closes.

Fixed in the new release.  I'm developing under Windows 98 and didn't find 
this until a friend reported it on their XP machine.

Bryan Creer

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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Dave Holland]

On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 08:33:01PM +0100, Bernard Hill wrote:
> Why are there no professional musicians who perform without being paid
> for it?

Surely you are not trying to say that no professional musician would
ever perform without payment! I know some who do. Charity events,
playing for fun or as a gift, etc.

> >* Programming is fun.
> Not when you do it for a living.

Not everyone would agree with that.

> Music Publisher would not exist if I did not get income from it.
[...]
> Isn't this completely obvious?

Your situtation is entirely clear now that you've explained it. I hope
you can understand that other people's situations do not match your own.

Dave (professional system administrator, semi-professional musician,
amateur programmer)
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[abcusers] please don't unsubscribe

[Jeffrey Hurd]

Please excuse me, but i sort of deleted the address of
the person i was corresponding with concerning this
matter.

Since everything we've doesn't work, perhaps i should
remain on the list.

You see over the last couple of years, there have been
some strange events, in my life.  All of it concerning
music.  It wasn't until the last couple of weeks that
i began to realize this.  I really don't know where
all this is headed, but something coming up, maybe. 
At least it seems like that.  As long as i don't trip
out, and lose it all.

Never mind, it's part of the massive changes, that
have occurred.

Please leave me on the list.

jeff

__
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com
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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, I. Oppenheim
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>
>> >When a bang appears at the very END of such an input
>> >line, it forces a line break in the music OUTPUT.
>>
>> The end itself forces a line break, no?
>
>The newline only marks the end of the INPUT line; where
>the line breaks will be in the resulting OUTPUT is up
>to the software to decide.

>
>If the user wants to overrule the default layout
>algorithm, he can force a line break by ending the
>input line with a !


The standard says that the end of input causes and end of output line. I
quote:

"Generally one line of abc notation will produce one line of music,
althought if the music is too long it will overflow onto the next line".

[The start of the very last paragraph]

The implication is that if you write

abc abc|
abc abc|

Then you will get 2 lines of music.

I see no reason for an ! except inside a line a la abc2win. At least not
according to 1.7.6


Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] A bit of history

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jack Campin
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>
>+> having a line terminator is a great help in resolving the conflict
>+> between making ABC source-readable and having it generate readable
>+> staff notation.
>[my suggestion]
>+> Bee Te2d |ege dBG| Bee Te2d |BAG E3:|\
>+> BGG  G>AG|BAG ABd|!BAG  G>AG|ABG E3 |\
>+> BAG  GAG |BAG ABd| Bee  e2d |BAG E3|]
>
>+ Um. I must be missing something. Isn't
>
>+ Bee Te2d |ege dBG|Bee Te2d |BAG E3:|BGG  G>AG|BAG ABd|
>+ BAG  G>AG|ABG E3 |BAG  GAG |BAG ABd|Bee  e2d |BAG E3|]
>
>+ the simplest???
>
>It obscures the visual parallelism between bars 3 and 4 and bars
>11 and 12, and the identity between bars 8 and 10, so it simply
>doesn't meet the constraints I was setting.  This tune is in
>four-bar phrases and my ABC represents that.  *All* yours does is
>generate the final staff notation in the format needed - not a
>great deal of use if the software has pushed you into a way of
>working that made you get the source wrong in the first place.

But you realise how I created that don't you? I took your 3 lines and
with adding and deleting end-of-lines I created the 2-line! So you can
create the source how you like and then post-edit it.

Never mind, I see your point. And anyway since I am assured there are a
lot of tunes out there with ! midline breaks I'm going to have to
implement it in abc import for Music Publisher.

>
>This sort of parallelism is VERY important if you are trying to
>transcribe accurately from printed sources.  My error rate would
>go up by a factor of 100 if I couldn't lay source out like that,
>and I wouldn't even have contemplated the Aird project I'm currently
>working on if I only had staff notation as a check on my accuracy.
>I have copies of attempted transcriptions of the same tunes by
>other people, using free-format ABC aimed only at getting staff
>notation output.  EVERY SINGLE TUNE I'VE LOOKED AT has multiple
>errors, and there are 1200 of them in the collection.  I'm redoing
>it all from scratch.  (Many of the errors are because the other
>people were working from xeroxes, but even there a parallelized
>layout can make you think "hmm, that can't be right" and go back
>to see if what you thought was a staccato mark might actually be
>a durational dot or a fly turd). 

If you're transcribing from printed sources you might be interested in
Music Publisher which can scan in existing printed music. And with the
soon-expected abc export you can produce abc formatted output.

However the hassle of putting music on the scanner and getting it into
the software takes a minute or two and it may well be that a fast
transcription into an editor is easier.

>
>I am trying to use ABC to make something people will want to buy.
>If there's any chance it has a significant error rate they won't
>buy it.  I have no interest in using software that encourages
>sloppy scholarship.

I hadn't realised how close we are (physically). If you ever want to pop
down to Selkirk to chat or see things here I would love to compare
notes. My contact information is on my web site www.muspub.com



Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.muspub.com
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jeff Bigler
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>> Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 23:42:01 +0100
>> From: Jack Campin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> 
>> >> According to the BNF definition
>> >> http://www.norbeck.nu/abc/abcbnfx.htm
>> >> The bang is NOT a line terminator
>> 
>> Which was a booboo on the part of whoever let that through.
>> 
>> > IOW the ! simulates a line break.
>> 
>> It does in ABC2WIN, but as far as I know it doesn't yet in any other
>> application.  Which is a pain in the bum because it's a really good
>> idea and far more useful in the long term than the !...! constructs.
>
>Unfortunately, there's ABC out there that uses the !...! constructs, and
>other ABC out there that expects ! to be a line terminator.
>
>As far as I know, only abc2win has so far used ! as a line terminator,
>and the !...! extensions already exist in the 1.7.6 "draft standard",
>which most people on this list seem to agree should be the starting
>point for the new 2.0.0 standard.  This would argue for keeping !...! as
>part of standard ABC, and making ! as line terminator nonstandard.
>
>If this happens, I see several options for abc2win:

I'm more interested in the standard. However we do have to recognise
that many tunes out there use the abc2win standard.

>
>1) Keep ! as a line terminator and don't implement the !...!
>   extensions.  This would make abc2win a "nonstandard" implementation.
>
>2) Allow both.  Program abc2win to look first for all of the !...!
>   commands that are defined in the standard.  Any ! that is not part of
>   one of these commands is interpreted as a line terminator.  (Even if
>   the standard never mentions ! as a possible forced line break
>   character, I like this option as a piece of defensive programming.)
>   This probably wouldn't break many ABC files (if any), because the
>   odds of having two line breaks with only a few characters in between
>   is slim.  (Besides that, the only !...! commands that I see that
>   contain legal ABC in between are !D.C.!, !f!, !ff!, !fff!, and
>   !!.)

No, that's a bad idea. It does not allow for extensions to these
symbols. If I write a program to test for all "standard" !..! comments
then my program breaks as soon as another is added to the standard or a
different program starts to recognise them. What we want from the
standard is that new features will not cause old programs to crash. Or
perhaps I should say "future new features will not cause current
programs to crash".

>
>3) Use another character for either the escape character for either
>   extensions (e.g., +...+ instead of !...!) or as a line terminator.
>   This would also make abc2win a "nonstandard" implementation, and
>   would definitely break some (possibly many) existing ABC files.
>
>
>In terms of adding a forced line break to the standard, several people
>have talked about preserving the few ASCII characters that are as yet
>undesignated in ABC for something "important".  I think having a unique
>forced line break character may well be useful enough to warrant using
>one of them.  What would folks think of using & for this purpose?
>
>
>Jeff
>
>P.S.  While we're on the subject of the !...! commands, does anyone know
>why the mezzo piano dynamic was left out?  I.e., !mp! is not in the
>1.7.6 draft standard, and abcm2ps doesn't implement it.  (I had to add
>it by hand to deco.c, as follows.)

 I had already implemented in my upcoming abc reader as it's an
obvious omission.


Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] Free notation program for Windows - let's write it...

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, John Chambers
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>Bernard Hill writes:
>|
>| ... none of that tells me why anyone creates software in the first
>| place. I do not start projects which are not going to bring money in. I
>| see clearly that as an end-user having the source code is beneficial -
>| but what's in it for the programmer who created it?
>
>Fame?

You spell "famine" with an extra i and n  ;-)

>
>Of course, it could be just accidental.  Consider  my  tune
>finder. I wrote it originally for very selfish reasons. I'd
>noticed that there were a lot of collections  of  tunes  in
>abc format appearing on the web.  But when I wanted to find
>a tune, I had to dig through all of them. And they were all
>laid out differently.
>
[snip]

>It has got me a bit of notoriety.  But mostly, it has given
>me  a  fairly  convenient way of finding tunes any time I'm
>near a machine with web access, which is getting to be more
>and  more  of  the world as time passes.  If it helps other
>people too, well, as long as  it's  a  small  load  on  the
>machine (and it's a tiny load so far), they're welcome. The
>department likes the publicity, my name gets known among  a
>select crowd (that's you folks).  And I can use it whenever
>I like from anywhere.
>
>Does this need any more explaining?

Only to reassure me that you have another income, or explain why you are
not very hungry...


Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, John Chambers
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>
>
>Possibly we could just add a warning about this problem  to
>the  standard  (perhaps  in an "Implementation Suggestions"
>section), and suggest this approach for dealing with it.

SOunds good to me.


Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] bloody ! again

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jack Campin
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>
>Which was a booboo on the part of whoever let that through.
>Supporting the existing corpus of tunes is *alone* more
>important than allowing an inessential idiosyncratic extension
>in one application.

THAT has to be a good principal for a future standard.


Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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