Re: [abcusers] ABC 2.0 Compatibility with ABC2MTEX
So there are two examples of people who use abc2mtex for typesetting. But why not use Lilypond, which can do anything that abc2mtex could do and more? Because I'm using abc2mtex and have no intention of changing. I have a book in print which occasionally goes...but why am I explaining this? Why should I have to learn a new program when I have a perfectly good one I know how to use? I may take a look at lilypond if I can ever get it installed. (Last time, after downloading for a couple of hours thru a modem connection, I read the fine print at the end of the installation advice that one should become administrator before installing it, since the installation didn't work for windows 2000 otherwise. Figures.) There is even a *possible* project to bring it at least partially up to date. Why not spend that energy to join forces with Laura to make the ABC import of lilypond better? If I do migrate to lilypond, I'll certainly be lobbying Laura for a number of things. But that's in the future, and doesn't justify breaking backward compatibility now. Cheers, John To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC 2.0 Compatibility with ABC2MTEX
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, John Walsh wrote: So there are two examples of people who use abc2mtex for typesetting. But why not use Lilypond, which can do anything that abc2mtex could do and more? There is even a *possible* project to bring it at least partially up to date. Why not spend that energy to join forces with Laura to make the ABC import of lilypond better? 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] ABC 2.0 Compatibility with ABC2MTEX
Richard Robinson wrote, in response to a post of Barry Say: I particularly notice the comment in Irwin's abc-drafts, that Chris's original abc examples will need to be edited to conform to the standard. In fact, abc as it is currently being written is increasingly unlikely to go thrugh abc2mtex, and abc written for that is not likely to go through anything written to conform to this draft. Ouch! I was assuming he was talking about the use of +...+ for chords and s...s for slurs. I think all this old notation should be documented in the standard, and I'd hope that one or two popular applications would continue to be able to handle it---pity if all that music should become unreadable and unplayable---it was, after all, the standard for a few years. I trust that the rest of the notation---all of it---will continue to be supported. This, after all, is the great majority of music for which abc is used. Abc works just fine for that. It needs no extension. It simply needs to not be screwed up. There's no point in sacrificing *any* part of that for new extensions. My own personal collection is set up for printing by abc2mtex. When I send tunes out to musicians and other friends, I usually remember to strip the texisms out, but not always. I'd be extremely upset to start getting reports from friends that they were unable to handle my tunes, so that I'd have to tell them to scrap that new-fangled piece of junk they were using to process their abc's, and go back to the pre-2004 version. But I don't think that'll happen...except by inadvertence... Another thought. I suspect several of the people here will never have used abc2mtex, or TeX, and won't see the point unless you show some examples of what you're doing with it that no other app. can do instead. Fair enough. I can't speak for Barry Say---you were responding to his post---except that I know he has used abc2mtex over a period of time to produce some tune books for the Northumbrian smallpipes, including some in a small format to fit pipe cases. I believe he uses it for the quality of output---these are publications, after all. In my case, I've used abc and abc2mtex 1.5 to produce a book of tunes set for the uilleann pipes---Pipe Friendly Tunes, by name, 520 tunes, 203 pages, published by the Irish Pipers Club. It was entirely written with abc and TeX/MusiXTeX, except for the cover art and some decorative filler pages. (See the Pipers Club or NPU web sites.) There are two reasons I used abc2mtex: quality, and macros. It produces publication-quality output, as has been said before. Barry Say's books and mine are proof of that. Secondly, with the abc2mtex macro facility, I can do a lot of things that aren't (yet) a part of abc, such as various articulation marks special to piping, etc. (Actually, I didn't need that many for the book itself, which has pretty generic settings, but I do need them for some more detailed transcriptions that I occasionally do for Iris na bPiobairi, and for my own use.) The result is that when I need some particular notation, I can write a TeX macro to represent it, and alias it to one of the letters H--Z. This is extremely useful; it not only predates the U: field by years, but extends its functionality. I hope that I'll eventually be able to do the same thing with other programs---I understand abcm2ps will allow one to write postscript code for decorations, but I don't think it has quite the flexibility of the abc2mtex macros yet. So there are two examples of people who use abc2mtex for typesetting. I'm sure there are more. And of course, once one's spent the time to learn how to use a program, one tends to keep on using it, so that abc2mtex will probably continue to be used. There is even a *possible* project to bring it at least partially up to date. Cheers, John Walsh To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC 2.0 Compatibility with ABC2MTEX
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Martin Tarenskeen wrote: I have just joined this mailinglist so I could also ask: where can I find an archive of older threads/postings ? Go to: http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/abc/abc2-draft.html The introduction of the standard has, among other things, a pointer to the list archive. 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] ABC 2.0 Compatibility with ABC2MTEX
On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 10:51:40PM +0100, Barry Say wrote: I am concerned about the lack of backwards compatibility of the proposed standard with abc2mtex. Since this was the original program for ABC, I think these issues deserve some consideration. 2.This version of the standard has gone overboard in specifying %% type directives. As I understand it, this is a postscript notation. No, it's TeX :) All these are based on the fact that ABC uses % as a comment - which is TeX, via Chris W, for obvious reasons. All these %%whatever usages are based on the point that the first character makes it a comment, and thus anything behind that will be ignored by any ABC application unless it takes the trouble specifically to look for it. Though I agree with your overboard in the sense that, as I say elsewhere, this ad-hoc proliferation is likely to leave us with problems later. In abc2mtex, lines starting with \ were used to pass information directly to the typesetting level. These must be allowed in the new standard This is a good observation. I didn't even remember TeX when there was all the discussion of backslashes. Though I did notice that we seem to have strayed from the TeX special characters, as well, there would need to be a little translation layer before all of these newlydefined ones would get printed via TeX. I particularly notice the comment in Irwin's abc-drafts, that Chris's original abc examples will need to be edited to conform to the standard. In fact, abc as it is currently being written is increasingly unlikely to go thrugh abc2mtex, and abc written for that is not likely to go through anything written to conform to this draft. More on this elsewhere. One untested thought - is abc2ly and lilypond a possibility for you ? It at any rate keeps the TeXness that other abc apps don't. But I've never used it in anger, just a thought. Another thought. I suspect several of the people here will never have used abc2mtex, or TeX, and won't see the point unless you show some examples of what you're doing with it that no other app. can do instead. -- 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
