Bryan Creer wrote:
Phil Taylor said -
>The standard is abc v1.6. There's also a proposed draft
>standard which is still under discussion. Neither of them even
>mentions multivoice abc. Does that mean that nobody is allowed
>to post tunes which use the V: field to this group, which is
>devoted to the discussion of the abc language?
Read your own postings Phil. A couple of days ago you said -
>1. Anything but the most simple extension needs some experimentation
>to find out what works. You've got to do it first, then try it out with
>a lot of music to see if it's a good idea.
>2. If we had to wait for agreement nothing would ever get done.
I see no conflict whatsoever between those two quotes.
The draft standard doesn't consist of proposals it consists of extensions
that someone has already implemented and they aren't being discussed. They,
and other extensions such as middle= and the various versions of V:, are
already in the public domain and are being used.
Of course they are. When I said "You've got to try it out with a lot
of music" I meant that you have to give the program out to a lot of
users and get their feedback. There's no way you can road test it
yourself.
Are you prepared to say
that if a vote was taken that went against one of your favourite new
developments you would be willing to withdraw it?
Not if I, or my users found it useful. I would advise users in the
manual that this syntax is not supported by other abc programs and
advise them not to use it in publicly-distributed tunes. That is
currently the status of music on the same line as the V: field.
If Jack or anyone else chooses to ignore that it's not my problem.
Do you think that Jim Vint should withdraw the exclamation mark
used to mark end of line in abc2win?
Or that if a proposal
such as, for example, the !symbol! notation was adopted into the standard you
would be happy to incorperate it into BarFly?
The existing version of BarFly can already deal with it. I don't
advertise the fact because I think it's a bad idea.
John Chambers said -
>Fat chance. Even if we try that, experience so far has shown that
>there are serious incompatibilities possible between two programs
>that follow the "standard".
...and a great deal more beside.
So because we can't make it perfect we shouldn't try to make it better?
>The new, more formal standard will presumably fix a lot of this sort
>of problem,
Er? From whence does this come? Did you read Laura Conrad's posting?
>Programmers will implement
>subsets for the sort of music that they know.
That isn't a problem for anyone except themselves and the users of that
particular software. The problem that concerns me is extensions beyond the
standard which make tunes inaccessible to all but the software that was used
to produce them, especially if, as in the case of V:, there are several
incompatible versions.
No, Bryan, extensions beyond the standard don't make anything inaccessible,
on the contrary, they make new material accessible (though only to part
of the abc community). The existence of the V: field doesn't deny
anything to users of abc2win and abcmus (which don't recognise it).
The users of those programs can still use all the tunes they used before.
abc could be a top class act. All it takes is goodwill but, as Laura's
gratifyingly honest description of the achievements of the standards
committee shows, that seems to be somewhat lacking.
abc _is_ a class act. I don't see any evidence of lack of goodwill
on the part of the standards committee. On the contrary, there's
a considerable willigness to compromise. The job just aint that
easy, that's all.
Phil Taylor
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html