>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Wascher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Simon> I think abc notation format does not need to be the "better
Simon> Finale" supporting all the classical notation specials.
If your idea of sharing your work is to put it into Finale, which
costs a large amount of money, runs on very few operating systems, and
has no support for real-time bugfixing, I agree that Finale may well
be better for your purposes than ABC.
I started writing ABC because the current editions produced by people
who use Finale and other commercial packages don't meet my needs. My
editions do not meet the needs of many other people, but I would like
them to be able to use my work to create their own editions.
At present, I use ABC for two purposes:
To create the MIDI files on my web page.
As input to abc2ly, which I use to create the printed
versions.
I have recently started putting the lilypond on my website, in
addition to the ABC and the MIDI.
My experience is that most people who want to use my (data entry)
work, but not the actual edition, use the MIDI file. This is
unfortunate, since even in the current state of the ABC "standard",
the ABC contains a lot of information that the MIDI does not.
Unfortunately, the lilypond file is increasingly containing a lot of
information that the ABC does not. I would like ABC to evolve so that
I can put all the musical information into the ABC file, even if ABC
printing programs don't actually make use of it. That is, a piece I
transcribed last week
(http://www.laymusic.org/music/telemann/gulliver/laputier.pdf) used an
ornament which is common in baroque music, and available in lilypond
as \stacatissimo. I don't mind that abc2ps doesn't know how to draw a
\stacatissimo mark (like a stacatto, but a wedge-shape instead of a
dot), but I think it's unfortunate that people downloading my ABC are
not aware that Telemann wrote an ornament over those notes.
I think lilypond has potential to be a good way to share my work, as
it's open-source, and runs on a lot of platforms. However,
at the moment it's very difficult for an unmotivated unix or windows
user to install, and impossible for a macintosh user, so I can't in
good conscience consider telling people that if they want to use my
work differently from the way I provide it they should install
lilypond.
I think people haven't yet come to terms with how much the internet is
going to change publishing of all kinds. Now that I've worked with
electronic publishing, and I know how easy it is given a good source
to produce a part instead of a score, or a part in a different key
from the original, or to print in larger type, I get increasingly
irritated at dead-tree publishers of music when I want one of those
things and can't get it (without doing my own transcription). It
seems to me that Finale is not for my purposes a major improvement
over the dead-tree model, so I still think it's worthwhile for people
to think about how to best encode more information in the ABC.
--
Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ )
(617) 661-8097 fax: (801) 365-6574
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139
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