RE: [abcusers] ABC2win to sound card
Hi Phil, I'd be happy to be a beta tester for you. Alan Preliasco From: Phil Headford [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [abcusers] ABC2win to sound card Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2003 18:01:17 - Hi, I'm getting a Visual Basic program together that goes with ABC2win, but diverts sound from the PC speaker to the sound card. Anyone care to trial it or criticise? Flos Phil (Flos) Headford editor: Folkwrite magazine (Gloucestershire and surrounding counties) co-editor: Shreds Patches magazine (Shropshire and neighbours) fiddle: Old Swan Band, The English Country Dance Band, Cwm Dancing, Big Bad Contra 01952 240989 / 01452 310372 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 38 Upton Street, Tredworth, Gloucester GL1 4LA To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html _ Shop online for kidsÂ’ toys by age group, price range, and toy category at MSN Shopping. No waiting for a clerk to help you! http://shopping.msn.com To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] ABC2win to sound card
Hi, I'm getting a Visual Basic program together that goes with ABC2win, but diverts sound from the PC speaker to the sound card. Anyone care to trial it or criticise? Flos Phil (Flos) Headford editor: Folkwrite magazine (Gloucestershire and surrounding counties) co-editor: Shreds Patches magazine (Shropshire and neighbours) fiddle: Old Swan Band, The English Country Dance Band, Cwm Dancing, Big Bad Contra 01952 240989 / 01452 310372 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 38 Upton Street, Tredworth, Gloucester GL1 4LA To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
John Walsh wrote: ... Incidentally, for abc historians: if you have a copy of a Basic manual collecting dust on your shelves, check out the PLAY command. Hmmm... I think I can kinda guess what you're hinting at, but so many years have past! So, for those of us who happens to have such antiqus safely stored in our parents' house five hundred miles from present location: You don't happen to have a web reference, do you? Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
Frank Nordberg writes: Well, since I'm to blame for transcribing one of those books into ABC: abc2ps *did* in fact have some serious problems with some of the O'Neill 1001 tunes. I don't remember the details, though. Might have been some generic ABC problems, not related to abc2ps at all. I did a number of tunes from the 1760. There was quite a bit that couldn't be rendered at that time. The problem was more abc than abc2ps: it couldn't do segnos, fermata over bar lines, D.C. (or anything else which went below the staff), mordents, or sharp signs over turn signs over notes. (Still can't do that one!) It could do the tildes and tr over notes but they looked looked pretty cheesy; and in the airs there was quite a bit of other stuff---e.g. dynamic markings such as pp, ff, and crescendo hairpins. Tempo and expression indicators at the top of the tune such as quickly, cheerfully, slowly etc. had to be done with guitar chords and never looked right... et cetera and et cetera. This was one of the main reasons to implement the ! ! notation. Incidentally, for abc historians: if you have a copy of a Basic manual collecting dust on your shelves, check out the PLAY command. Cheers, John Walsh To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
John Chambers wrote: ... Thus, my site has a copy of the three O'Neill's books that have been transcribed, and the Ryan/Cole collection (up to 800 tunes now). I doubt that abc2ps would have any problem with anything in these canonical Irish collections. Well, since I'm to blame for transcribing one of those books into ABC: abc2ps *did* in fact have some serious problems with some of the O'Neill 1001 tunes. I don't remember the details, though. Might have been some generic ABC problems, not related to abc2ps at all. Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
From: Guido Gonzato [EMAIL PROTECTED] That said, programs don't necessarily have to comply to 1.7.6 or 2.0.0 or 3.1415. Many users are happy with single-voice ABC, so programs targeting these users may be left untouched. But what about we classical musicians, who need more? What's more important, so-called standards or people's needs? As long as there is more than one program and they are all to be called abc programs, standards are important. As I've noted before, our collection at folkinfo is a small one but we want people to be free to be able to choose between software programs and feel confident that the abc will turn out the same for them. Statement #2. My goodness, at last! Isn't it time we declare programs like abc2ps or abc2mtex _obsolete_ and _unsupported_? Isn't it time the ABC home page warned people against using these old programs? Why people still use abc2ps beats me. As long as we make the new ABC standard upwards compatible with 1.7.6, there is no problem at all. And about those broken old ABC files, I remind you that abcpp can fix most of them! From my view point, when agreed, having abc 2.0 will be ideal for that. It's sort of a landmark number and as long as the developers ensure thier programs meet what parts of 2.0 they need to support and don't do anything strange with unsupported bits), we and I'm sure others would be recommending that users looked for abc 2 programs... I'm not sure about legacy abc though. In our case, everything we have works with abcm2ps so I don't see a problem but even if there was, it would be no big deal to get everything up to spec if needed. I'm less than sure about some sites that may use say abc2win though. If 2.0 did something that did break it, do we enven know who to try to suggest the stuff should be upgraded, let alone whether they would be willing? Jon To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
I use this abc for obtaining, sending, transcribing and printing tunes - I use emacs/xemacs as editor with abc-mode and then to produce top quality printed music I use jcabc2ps - what is *wrong* with the abc2ps's ?? - I like to use software that does one job - but does it very, very well. Grump over. --On Wednesday, July 16, 2003 07:55:53 +0200 Guido Gonzato [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Statement #2. My goodness, at last! Isn't it time we declare programs like abc2ps or abc2mtex _obsolete_ and _unsupported_? Isn't it time the ABC home page warned people against using these old programs? Why people still use abc2ps beats me. As long as we make the new ABC standard upwards compatible with 1.7.6, there is no problem at all. And about those broken old ABC files, I remind you that abcpp can fix most of them! Iain (Jethro) Anderson - DBA (ISYS) University of Bristol Pigsty Morris City Clickers Step and Clog Instep Research Team Insword Rapper Never give a sword to a man who can't dance To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Iain (Jethro) Anderson wrote: I use this abc for obtaining, sending, transcribing and printing tunes - I use emacs/xemacs as editor with abc-mode and then to produce top quality printed music I use jcabc2ps - what is *wrong* with the abc2ps's ?? - I like to use software that does one job - but does it very, very well. nothing wrong: abcm2ps is one of my favourite pieces of software _ever_. In my view, it's so good and well thought-out that the standard should follow it closely. However, the ancestor abc2ps is painfully outdated; yet many people still use it - probably ignoring the existence of its successors. Later, Guido =8-) -- Guido Gonzato, Ph.D. guido . gonzato at univr . it - Linux System Manager Universita' di Verona (Italy), Facolta' di Scienze MM. FF. NN. Ca' Vignal II, Strada Le Grazie 15, 37134 Verona (Italy) Tel. +39 045 8027990; Fax +39 045 8027928 --- Timeas hominem unius libri To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
From: Iain (Jethro) Anderson [EMAIL PROTECTED] I use this abc for obtaining, sending, transcribing and printing tunes - I use emacs/xemacs as editor with abc-mode and then to produce top quality printed music I use jcabc2ps - what is *wrong* with the abc2ps's ?? - I like to use software that does one job - but does it very, very well. There are good programs in the abc2ps group. The program Guido had singled out was abc2ps. This doesn't work too well to the draft standard and I think is unlikely to be updated. I could produce you an abc using w: where the words would align perfectly in abcm2ps but not work out in abc2ps or visa-versa. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
Jethro writes: | I use this abc for obtaining, sending, transcribing and printing tunes - I | use emacs/xemacs as editor with abc-mode and then to produce top quality | printed music I use jcabc2ps - what is *wrong* with the abc2ps's ?? - I | like to use software that does one job - but does it very, very well. I think that Guido was talking about the original abc2ps, which Michael Methfessel is not working on any more. Its descendants all have names that are variants with one or two letters added. They are probably all still in some development state, but the original abc2ps is basically a museum piece now. Not to say that it doesn't work; it works fine. It just lacks some of the goodies that are in the clones. Michael basically told us that he no longer had time to work on it, and tacitly encouraged us to take it and do interesting things with it. I also see clues that a number of people are using abc2mtex, though it may be restricted to those who have TeX installed for other reasons. I've wondered whether someone might like to take this over and rework it for the new standard. The result could be a very good music publishing tool. But as far as I know, abc2mtex isn't being worked on by anyone now. The source for both abc2ps and abc2mtex is all available for anyone who wants to work on them. | --On Wednesday, July 16, 2003 07:55:53 +0200 Guido Gonzato [EMAIL PROTECTED] | wrote: | | Statement #2. My goodness, at last! Isn't it time we declare programs like | abc2ps or abc2mtex _obsolete_ and _unsupported_? Isn't it time the ABC | home page warned people against using these old programs? Why people still | use abc2ps beats me. | | As long as we make the new ABC standard upwards compatible with 1.7.6, | there is no problem at all. And about those broken old ABC files, I remind | you that abcpp can fix most of them! To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
Guido Gonzato writes: | On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Iain (Jethro) Anderson wrote: | | I use this abc for obtaining, sending, transcribing and printing tunes - I | use emacs/xemacs as editor with abc-mode and then to produce top quality | printed music I use jcabc2ps - what is *wrong* with the abc2ps's ?? - I | like to use software that does one job - but does it very, very well. | | nothing wrong: abcm2ps is one of my favourite pieces of software _ever_. | In my view, it's so good and well thought-out that the standard should | follow it closely. | | However, the ancestor abc2ps is painfully outdated; yet many people still | use it - probably ignoring the existence of its successors. I'm not sure I'd agree with that. True, if you want good-looking versions of some of the choral, band and orchestral music that jef has worked on, or the Balkan/Klezmer tunes in my collection, you'll want the clones that support those extensions. But if you're into traditional music of most of Europe or North America, you'll find that abc2ps does a fine job on the abc tunes that you get online or in email. Thus, my site has a copy of the three O'Neill's books that have been transcribed, and the Ryan/Cole collection (up to 800 tunes now). I doubt that abc2ps would have any problem with anything in these canonical Irish collections. Nor would abc2win, though it might draw staff breaks at places you don't like (if you even care). Tunes from the Village Music Project work without more than an occasional warning about the stray ! chars. I'd guess that it does an ok job of at least 90% of the abc on the web. This isn't surprising, since the first significant crowd of abc users was into music of this type. No need for fancy key signatures or multiple voices per staff, so what's the real problem? I also have a small zweifacher collection, trad Bavarian music with its jumble of meters. The old abc2ps does a fine job with it in any of the usual forms. It even handles the demented M:23/44 time signatures that you sometimes see in this music, which both apalled and amused me when I first stumbled across it and found tht it worked. I've even used this in a few of my transcriptions, to add to the general level of perversity. ;-) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 02:52:28PM +, John Chambers wrote: Jethro writes: | I use this abc for obtaining, sending, transcribing and printing tunes - I | use emacs/xemacs as editor with abc-mode and then to produce top quality | printed music I use jcabc2ps - what is *wrong* with the abc2ps's ?? - I | like to use software that does one job - but does it very, very well. I think that Guido was talking about the original abc2ps, which Michael Methfessel is not working on any more. Its descendants all have names that are variants with one or two letters added. They are probably all still in some development state, but the original abc2ps is basically a museum piece now. Not to say that it doesn't work; it works fine. It just lacks some of the goodies that are in the clones. I tend to use it, as default. A lot of my abc gets seen by other people, so using something without the goodies helps keep it usable. At cost of the goodies, of course, which I'd like to be able to use, if I ever get the confidence that the rest of the world will be able to handle them. Where I do need something that can't be done with abc2ps, I put a note in the header about what variant is needed. I also see clues that a number of people are using abc2mtex, though it may be restricted to those who have TeX installed for other reasons. I've wondered whether someone might like to take this over and rework it for the new standard. The result could be a very good music publishing tool. But as far as I know, abc2mtex isn't being worked on by anyone now. The TeX-ness of it makes for many possibilities that the %%text constructions can't get near, in terms of setting text and tunes together on a page. (nor would we want them too, I reckon. Oh dear, have I just started another 6-month thread ?). My feeling about this is that abc and typesetting are separate issues; I do this by converting each tune, individually, to eps (with all the text removed, title and all) and then writing LaTeX around the include eps commands. Which gives all the possibilities of LaTeX (rather than TeX) without restricting me to abc2mtex. Automatic indexing, yeah ! having said which, I still find TeX,etc, a nightmare to work with. I just don't know anything else that does the job. -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 03:13:04PM +, John Chambers wrote: I also have a small zweifacher collection, trad Bavarian music with its jumble of meters. The old abc2ps does a fine job with it in any of the usual forms. It even handles the demented M:23/44 time signatures that you sometimes see in this music, which both apalled and amused me when I first stumbled across it and found tht it worked. I've even used this in a few of my transcriptions, to add to the general level of perversity. ;-) Heh heh. How about player programs ? -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
Jon Freeman writes: | From: Iain (Jethro) Anderson [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | I use this abc for obtaining, sending, transcribing and printing tunes - I | use emacs/xemacs as editor with abc-mode and then to produce top quality | printed music I use jcabc2ps - what is *wrong* with the abc2ps's ?? - I | like to use software that does one job - but does it very, very well. | | There are good programs in the abc2ps group. The program Guido had singled | out was abc2ps. This doesn't work too well to the draft standard and I think | is unlikely to be updated. I could produce you an abc using w: where the | words would align perfectly in abcm2ps but not work out in abc2ps or | visa-versa. Hmmm ... Could you show us such an example. I'm not aware of any changes to the w: rules in abcm2ps or other abc2ps clones. Which doesn't mean that there weren't any changes. But they may not have been intentional. Michael's original implementation does seem to do quite a good job. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
Richard Robinson writes: | On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 03:13:04PM +, John Chambers wrote: | | I also have a small zweifacher collection, trad Bavarian | music with its jumble of meters. The old abc2ps does a fine | job with it in any of the usual forms. It even handles the | demented M:23/44 time signatures that you sometimes see | in this music, which both apalled and amused me when I | first stumbled across it and found tht it worked. I've | even used this in a few of my transcriptions, to add to the | general level of perversity. ;-) | | Heh heh. How about player programs ? Yeah. I think that the best approach for them is to just play the note lengths that they find, and not worry about it. There is unmeasured abc around, and in some musical styles this is required. It would be nice if everything would support M:none. (Is this in the proposed standard?) The Bavarian case is of at least minor interest, because it's not unmeasured. It has lots of rhythm. But part of the style is that different bars have different numbers of beats. Sometimes people write the time signature in (nearly) every measure. Sometimes they get fed up with this, write 2 or 3 time signatures at the beginning, and the reader is expected to be able to count. There are several conventional rhythmic notations here, all in active use. Sometimes they (the writers and the readers) don't get it right. But it can be a lot of fun. One reason for being appalled by the likes of M:23/44 is that it pretty much means that a program won't be able to warn you if you mess up a measure. It would be handy if you could say something that means M:2/4 and M:3/4 are both used; but warn me if I type a measure with any other length. We've had suggestions that M:2/4,3/4 would be the right way to do this. But I don't think any software handles this right now, and it's probably not consistent with any standard. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 04:34:00PM +, John Chambers wrote: Richard Robinson writes: | | Heh heh. How about player programs ? Yeah. I think that the best approach for them is to just play the note lengths that they find, and not worry about it. There is unmeasured abc around, and in some musical styles this is required. It would be nice if everything would support M:none. (Is this in the proposed standard?) The Bavarian case is of at least minor interest, because it's not unmeasured. It has lots of rhythm. But part of the style is that different bars have different numbers of beats. Sometimes people write the time signature in (nearly) every measure. Sometimes they get fed up with this, write 2 or 3 time signatures at the beginning, and the reader is expected to be able to count. There are several conventional rhythmic notations here, all in active use. Sometimes they (the writers and the readers) don't get it right. But it can be a lot of fun. One reason for being appalled by the likes of M:23/44 is that it pretty much means that a program won't be able to warn you if you mess up a measure. It would be handy if you could say something that means M:2/4 and M:3/4 are both used; but warn me if I type a measure with any other length. We've had suggestions that M:2/4,3/4 would be the right way to do this. But I don't think any software handles this right now, and it's probably not consistent with any standard. Yes. Also all those Balkan ones, where it would be nice to write 7 as (4+3)/4, 18 as (4+3+3+4+4)/8, or whatever. -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
The TeX-ness of it makes for many possibilities that the %%text constructions can't get near, in terms of setting text and tunes together on a page. (nor would we want them too, I reckon. Oh dear, have I just started another 6-month thread ?). My feeling about this is that abc and typesetting are separate issues; For lowlevel TeX formatting of music notation, one can use already several excellent packages such as MTX, PMX and Lilypond. These are all actively maintained. It would be by far more helpful to maintain good, standard conforming ABC import filters for these packages than to maintain an abc2tex package directly. Groeten, Irwin Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~* To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
Richard Robinson writes: | | Yes. Also all those Balkan ones, where it would be nice to write 7 as | (4+3)/4, 18 as (4+3+3+4+4)/8, or whatever. Actually, abc2ps and clones should handle this without any problem. I've done this (with or without parens) in a number of tunes. The one qualification might be that the '+' doesn't look all that good in print. It tends to overlap the 4th staff line, and it's too wide. I tend to use '.', mostly because it looks better. Some simple tests show that the parser isn't too picky about what's before or after the '/'. That's good for a music formatter. It's maybe not so wonderful if you're trying to write a player. Another thing I did that was useful was to have the code that handles the Q: line notice things that look like notes (2/4, 3/8, etc.) and replace them with the actual notes. Then I can write something like Q: 1/8 3/16=60 and it gets drawn with the two notes followed by =60. This is a fairly conventional way of giving a tempo for such complex rhythms. Not that I use Q: lines much. In fact, it's often more useful to just produce the notes without a tempo. So Q: 1/8 1/8 3/16 1/8 1/8 would draw the conventional 5-note rhythm tipoff for a kopanica. Any Balkan musician would know the approximate tempo. I wonder if this violates anything in the standard? I think there are other abc programs that will handle, say, Q: 1/4=120 in the usual way, and draw a quarter note for the 1/4. I just made it do the substitution for any fraction that looks like a note length. The original abc2ps did some of this, but it didn't always work; what I did was more of a debugging job with a lot of Balkan test cases. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 07:41:43PM +0200, I. Oppenheim wrote: The TeX-ness of it makes for many possibilities that the %%text constructions can't get near, in terms of setting text and tunes together on a page. (nor would we want them too, I reckon. Oh dear, have I just started another 6-month thread ?). My feeling about this is that abc and typesetting are separate issues; For lowlevel TeX formatting of music notation, one can use already several excellent packages such as MTX, PMX and Lilypond. These are all actively maintained. Ah, but I didn't mean TeX formatting of the musical notation. I meant, how to get typesetting of text that surrounds abc, how to handle the mixing of text and tunes - placing abc tunes on a sheet of paper along with other text; or text on a sheet of tunes, depending on how you look at it. -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 05:57:39PM +, John Chambers wrote: Richard Robinson writes: | | Yes. Also all those Balkan ones, where it would be nice to write 7 as | (4+3)/4, 18 as (4+3+3+4+4)/8, or whatever. ... Not that I use Q: lines much. In fact, it's often more useful to just produce the notes without a tempo. So Q: 1/8 1/8 3/16 1/8 1/8 would draw the conventional 5-note rhythm tipoff for a kopanica. Any Balkan musician would know the approximate tempo. That's neat. I hadn't thought to try that. I wonder if this violates anything in the standard? I think there are other abc programs that will handle, say, Q: 1/4=120 in the usual way, and draw a quarter note for the 1/4. I just made it do the substitution for any fraction that looks like a note length. I shall await comments before making any big commitment to it ... -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 09:25:14PM +0200, I. Oppenheim wrote: On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Richard Robinson wrote: For lowlevel TeX formatting of music notation, one can use already several excellent packages such as MTX, PMX and Lilypond. These are all actively maintained. Ah, but I didn't mean TeX formatting of the musical notation. I meant, how to get typesetting of text that surrounds abc, how to handle the mixing of text and tunes - placing abc tunes on a sheet of paper along with other text; or text on a sheet of tunes, depending on how you look at it. If the music is in TeX, it is easy to handle the accompaniying text in (La)TeX as well. I'm not sure of your point here ? Do you mean that the packages you mention can be used to convert ABC into TeX, as an alternative to converting it into eps via the usual suspects ? -- Richard Robinson The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
Richard == Richard Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Ah, but I didn't mean TeX formatting of the musical notation. I meant, how to get typesetting of text that surrounds abc, how to handle the mixing of text and tunes - placing abc tunes on a sheet of paper along with other text; or text on a sheet of tunes, depending on how you look at it. If the music is in TeX, it is easy to handle the accompaniying text in (La)TeX as well. Richard I'm not sure of your point here ? Do you mean that the Richard packages you mention can be used to convert ABC into TeX, Richard as an alternative to converting it into eps via the Richard usual suspects ? I can't speak to what Irwin meant, but it is indeed true that if you convert ABC into lilypond, you can then include the lilypond in a Latex file to create a Latex document. I believe there are similar possibilities with musixtex. -- Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ ) (617) 661-8097 fax: (801) 365-6574 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win vs. ABC...
Richard == Richard Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Richard What I do is take all the text out of the abc tune, use Richard the usual abc2ps suspects to generate an eps of the bare Richard tune (with no text), have LaTeX set the title and any Richard other abc-tune text (according to a printf-style format Richard string) and then use LaTeX's \includegraphics to get the Richard tune eps in. I did a whole book like that. A major disadvantage was that most of the tunes in my book took more than one page, so I had to do the page-breaking by hand. That's one of the reasons I use lilypond-book now. -- Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ ) (617) 661-8097 fax: (801) 365-6574 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win and ! line breaks.
The standard can be set to say that !...! is a special symbol, and developers can programs to read files on that basis UNLESS the header contains abc2win in which case it is a line break! Someone tell me that life really could be that simple! It isn't. I really want mid-line ! linebreaks (they're far more important to me than anything I could achieve with !...! constructs) and I have been lobbying Phil for years to add them to BarFly, which doesn't put any creator info in its headers by default. This isn't a matter of supporting legacy tunes, it's about doing something mostly new (insofar as abc2win users don't seem to have yet exploited this possibility in their program the way I want to use it) AND IT CANNOT BE ACHIEVED BY ANY OTHER MEANS. Let's hope there are a lot more programs that can use them in future. Perhaps it might make it clearer why I'm being so insistent about this if I explain what most of my time using ABC is spent doing. I spend about a full day a week in the National Library of Scotland researching things, mostly tunes, which are copied in ABC using a geriatric Mac laptop that runs BarFly and pair of cheap walkman headphones. For the time I'm transcribing tunes, I'm working with rare sources that I can't afford to have photocopied; the process required by the library for old and delicate material involves intermediate microfilm, and usually leads to a fairly bad result anyway, where things like articulation marks often get lost. (The NLS's charges, which are among the lowest in Scotland for rare materials, are still high enough that if I wanted everything I transcribed to be on xerox first, I could easily incur a photocopy bill for a day's direct transcribing that was more than I paid for my laptop). So I've got no alternative but to get the most accurate transcription possible on the spot. The way BarFly works gives me a three-way check on accuracy: - does the structure make sense? - does it sound right? - does the score on the screen look exactly like what's on the page of the original in front of me? The first is dealt with by the columnar layout I use; I'm mostly doing things in four- and eight-bar phrases, and if something can't be laid out to look like that in ABC source form, chances are that something's gone wrong somewhere, either 250 years ago or in the previous five minutes. (BarFly also has error checking utilities which on average picks up one miskeying every eight bars; I'd find these manually anyway, but BarFly finds them quicker). The second is handled by BarFly's playback (helped by the ability to highlight the note being played - this means you can move instantly from a general feeling of something's not quite right in that phrase to typo on that note). The third is supported by BarFly's instant preview (no batch processing or invoking of GhostScript involved - GhostScript would be unusably big and slow on that laptop anyway). In this situation I don't have time to process the layout optimized to show the structure of the tune into some other form before showing it on the screen - and since I need to identify where any errors are in my source, what's on the screen has to be directly derived from it. So I *cannot* afford to have unnecessary built-in conflicts between source readability and screen readability. If I want a print-optimized version by adding graphical tweaks, I'll do it at home; the laptop is a lousy machine to use for them anyway. What it is *very* good for is interactivity, and it's the speed of switching between structure, sound, and score modes of perception that makes for accuracy. But supporting this is a rather fragile characteristic of a language, which many syntactic misfeatures could break, and people who haven't used it in such an interactive environment won't easily spot the important issues. - Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760 http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack * food intolerance data recipes, Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM Embro, Embro. -- off-list mail to j-c rather than abc at this site, please -- To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win and ! line breaks.
Jack Campin writes: | Perhaps it might make it clearer why I'm being so insistent about | this if I explain what most of my time using ABC is spent doing. | I spend about a full day a week in the National Library of Scotland | researching things, mostly tunes, which are copied in ABC using a | geriatric Mac laptop that runs BarFly and pair of cheap walkman | headphones. | | For the time I'm transcribing tunes, I'm working with rare sources | that I can't afford to have photocopied; the process required by the | library for old and delicate material involves intermediate microfilm, | and usually leads to a fairly bad result anyway, where things like | articulation marks often get lost. (The NLS's charges, which are | among the lowest in Scotland for rare materials, are still high enough | that if I wanted everything I transcribed to be on xerox first, I could | easily incur a photocopy bill for a day's direct transcribing that was | more than I paid for my laptop). So have you (or they) considered using a digital camera instead? This is rapidly becoming a much more practical approach than microfilm. For an example, look at: http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/img/P7070088.JPG I took this photo with a handheld Olympus C-700. It's one of many cameras with a macro (;-) feature and can focus as close as about 10 cm. This photo was taken from about 25 cm. The weakness of the staff lines isn't a photo artifact; the original was that bad. In fact, the picture just might be slightly more readable than the original. Anyway, this was taken with the page lying flat in its binder, as you can probably see, and didn't require me or anything else touching the page. Bound pages would be a little bit trickier, since they'd have to be held flat. You'd probably want two people to handle that, if the pages are at all fragile. After taking the photo, I plugged the camera into a Mac Powerbook, iPhoto read it in, and I scp'd it over to my web server. This was a couple minutes' work. I'm not sure how much of this would work on a geriatric Mac, but it certainly works well with a newer Mac laptop. Some years back, I read an interesting SF short story, about Sherlock Holmes' last case. He was contracted by a local flying saucer nut to investigate the possibility of visiting aliens. Sherlock thought that if they were really here, and hadn't announced themselves, they were probably scholars studying our planet. So one good place to look for them would be the British Museum. He went there and watched the patrons. He noticed some of them taking photos of a number of books in the collection, without using flash. So he came back later with a light meter, and with a bit of research at camera dealers, determined that there were no cameras available that could take hand-held photos without flash under the museum's low-light conditions. This proved that they were using technology not available on Earth, so they had to be aliens. Case solved. This story might not work now. I did use flash for my photo, but I'm pretty sure there are digital cameras available (for a good price) that wouldn't have needed flash. But this does give you an idea of what a consumer-grade camera costing a few hundred dollars can do now. Just make sure it can do close focus, 20 cm or less. (I wonder if I could find the story. I don't recall who wrote it or what the title was. As the story continues, Sherlock is soon visited by one of the aliens, who learned of him because they were monitoring the saucer-nut organization, and thus learned that he had unmasked them. They wanted to hire him to look for other aliens, because they were having problems with unauthorized visitors to Earth, and needed someone who was good at spotting them ...) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] abc2win and ! line breaks.
From: I. Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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! If 1. the above comment means that abc2win always writes its name in a comment and 2. The files which use ! in the middle of a line as a line break are almost all written by abc2win then this is very encouraging news! The standard can be set to say that !...! is a special symbol, and developers can programs to read files on that basis UNLESS the header contains abc2win in which case it is a line break! Someone tell me that life really could be that simple! Please!! 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 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes 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. Having first given him a Guantanamo Bay-style brainwash to get him to forget all the ordure that's been thrown his way over the years over the ! issue, I presume :-) -- Steve Mansfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lesession.co.uk - abc music notation tutorial, the uk.music.folk newsgroup FAQ, and other goodies To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win and ! line breaks.
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], David Webber [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes The standard can be set to say that !...! is a special symbol, and developers can programs to read files on that basis UNLESS the header contains abc2win in which case it is a line break! Someone tell me that life really could be that simple! Please!! CLONK! Sorry David, no such luck. abc2Win only appears in the *file* footer, like so % Output from ABC2Win Version 2.1 k preview on 05/07/2003 not the individual *tune* headers within that file. So if a file is created and only ever edited in abc2Win and posted to the Net as a complete file, then that construct will be at the bottom of the file. A tune created in abc2Win and then copied into an email, or a tune extracted from a file by JC's tune finder, almost certainly *won't* have any evidence in it of creation in abc2Win. -- Steve Mansfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lesession.co.uk - abc music notation tutorial, the uk.music.folk newsgroup FAQ, and other goodies To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win and ! line breaks.
From: Steve Mansfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sorry David, no such luck. abc2Win only appears in the *file* footer, like so... Ah well, I knew it couldn't *really* be so simple - but that is at least something - on can parse for abc2win and assume things if it is found, even if one can't assume anything if it is not :-( 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 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win and ! line breaks.
David Webber writes: | 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. | | If | | 1. the above comment means that abc2win always writes its name in a | comment | | and | | 2. The files which use ! in the middle of a line as a line break are | almost all written by abc2win | | then this is very encouraging news! | | The standard can be set to say that !...! is a special symbol, and | developers can programs to read files on that basis UNLESS the | header contains abc2win in which case it is a line break! | | Someone tell me that life really could be that simple! | Please!! Um, sorry; it's not that simple. Abc2win does write its name in a comment, but in the worst possible way: It puts the comment at the end of the tune, after a blank line. Yes, it really is outside the tune. And it really is after where you want to know about it. There's nothing in the headers that identifies a tune as coming from abc2win. You have to buffer the entire tune in memory, and examine the text after the tune to see if there's a %... line that contains abc2win. Sorry 'bout dat. There's nothing I can do to fix it. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win and ! line breaks.
From: John Chambers [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... You have to buffer the entire tune in memory, and examine the text after the tune to see if there's a %... line that contains abc2win. That in itself is no problem. ABC is so concise that buffering a tune in memory is completely trivial these days. In fact when I started writing my import filter, that was the first thing I did - read the whole file into a string with '\n' for newlines and stick a '\0' on the end. Then one can start parsing it sensibly. The dual use of ! is still, as far as I can see, the worst conflict which has come up in existing files, and something therefore which urgently needs sorting out in a standard. *Anything* which helps divine its purpose in existing files is useful at this stage. 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 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win and ! line breaks.
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], David Webber [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes From: I. Oppenheim [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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! If 1. the above comment means that abc2win always writes its name in a comment and 2. The files which use ! in the middle of a line as a line break are almost all written by abc2win then this is very encouraging news! The standard can be set to say that !...! is a special symbol, and developers can programs to read files on that basis UNLESS the header contains abc2win in which case it is a line break! Someone tell me that life really could be that simple! Please!! Good thought, Dave. You had me excited for a minute. However users of abc2win may well (probably?) encode their abcs by hand with a text editor. Bernard Hill Braeburn Software Author of Music Publisher system Music Software written by musicians for musicians http://www.braeburn.co.uk Selkirk, Scotland To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win and ! line breaks.
Bernard Hill wrote: In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], David Webber [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Someone tell me that life really could be that simple! Please!! Good thought, Dave. You had me excited for a minute. However users of abc2win may well (probably?) encode their abcs by hand with a text editor. No, they type it into an entry window in abc2win. The problem is that abc2win does not add its identifier after every tune in the file, only the last one, so you've got to read the file to the end to get it, even if it has thousands of tunes in it. Also many tunes are posted to mailing lists by abc2win users, and end up in compilation files which contain tunes from multiple sources (and without their identifiers). At least one BarFly user habitually adds exclamation marks at the ends of lines to make them work with abc2win (BarFly just ignores them). Some other characteristics of abc2win files: * They play at the wrong speed e.g. R: reel L: 1/8 Q: 100 Plays like a funeral march. It's because abc2win's player program misinterprets the Q: field and plays evrything three or four times faster than specified. Users just compensate by putting a smaller number in the Q: field without bothering about what it actually means. * They contain large numbers of syntax errors (I don't think it does any error checking at all, and accepts any old garbage as abc). Neither of these is very useful for the purpose:-( Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] abc2win
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/ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] abc2win
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 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] ABC2WIN, AbcMus
Bruce Olson wrote: My ABC2WIN has a nice little button on the tool bar that plays A=440 Hz (verified on a 2 channel oscilloscope with 1 KHz reference square wave on the 2nd channel). Why does my ABC2WIN play that A in a tune at 880 Hz, (and all other notes) an octave too high? Bruce Olson Henrik Norbeck's ABCMUS plays the correct frequencies (time the highest peaks of the triple sawtooth waveform). Also timing is much better than one can do with BASICS Sound command (at least the way I've been using it). I presume that everyone knows that BASICs Sound command puts a square wave into the computer's speaker. [I'm going to try faking BASICs Sound command into giving the right timing. Going by the book doesn't work very well.] Bruce Olson -- Old English, Irish and, Scots: popular songs, tunes, broadside ballads at my website (no advs-spam, etc)- www.erols.com/olsonw or click below A href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw" Click /a To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC2WIN, AbcMus
John Walsh wrote: Bruce Olson wrote: My ABC2WIN has a nice little button on the tool bar that plays A=440 Hz (verified on a 2 channel oscilloscope with 1 KHz reference square wave on the 2nd channel). Why does my ABC2WIN play that A in a tune at 880 Hz, (and all other notes) an octave too high? Bruce Olson Henrik Norbeck's ABCMUS plays the correct frequencies (time the highest peaks of the triple sawtooth waveform). Also timing is much better than one can do with BASICS Sound command (at least the way I've been using it). I presume that everyone knows that BASICs Sound command puts a square wave into the computer's speaker. [I'm going to try faking BASICs Sound command into giving the right timing. Going by the book doesn't work very well.] Bruce Olson It could have something to do with the operating system, too. I recently changed computers, copied abcmus from windows 95 to a win 2000 partition, and found that it now played at 1/6 speed. Identical program, bit for bit. Correct pitch, but six times slower. I contacted Henrik Norbeck, the author of abcmus, who said he'd run into it elsewhere with other versions of NT, and the fix was simply to set the speed for direct midi playback to 600%. Works fine... (!!!) Cheers, John Walsh To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html My player programed in True Basic, True Basic system operated and compiled versions, and Norbeck's AbcMus, all play frequencies correctly on my computer. ABC2WIN on my computer plays them an octave high. Bruce Olson -- Old English, Irish and, Scots: popular songs, tunes, broadside ballads at my website (no advs-spam, etc)- www.erols.com/olsonw or click below A href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw" Click /a To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC2WIN, AbcMus
Bruce Olson wrote: My ABC2WIN has a nice little button on the tool bar that plays A=440 Hz (verified on a 2 channel oscilloscope with 1 KHz reference square wave on the 2nd channel). Why does my ABC2WIN play that A in a tune at 880 Hz, (and all other notes) an octave too high? Bruce Olson Henrik Norbeck's ABCMUS plays the correct frequencies (time the highest peaks of the triple sawtooth waveform). Also timing is much better than one can do with BASICS Sound command (at least the way I've been using it). I presume that everyone knows that BASICs Sound command puts a square wave into the computer's speaker. You'll have to ask Jim Vint for a definitive answer on this, but one possible explanation is that the player in abc2win is very basic, and just plays through the PC's internal speaker. It does not attempt to sound like any real musical instrument. The internal speaker in most PCs is tiny, and cannot reproduce low frequencies, so it makes sense to play the tunes an octave higher than written so that the low notes remain audible. It really makes no musical difference; if you play a tune on a D whistle you are playing an octave higher than if you play on a D flute, but it's still the same tune. AbcMus, on the other hand is a dedicated player program which plays through speakers attached to the sound card and uses real instrument sounds, so it can (must) use the correct pitch for the instrument selected. A more serious difference between the two programs lies in their interpretation of the tempo (Q:) field. Play a reel with Q:400 on both programs and compare the results. In abcMus it plays at a brisk dancing speed, while in PlayQabc it goes like a rocket. If you calculate how long the tune should take to play you will find that abcMus is correct. [I'm going to try faking BASICs Sound command into giving the right timing. Going by the book doesn't work very well.] Ho ho! Isn't sound programming fun? Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
