>>>>> "Laurenz" == Laurenz Wiskott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Laurenz> In the abc standard currently being discussed w: allows lines of lyrics
Laurenz> aligned with the notes, and programs like abcm2ps or abctab2ps already
Laurenz> understand this. '-' indicates a break between syllables within a word and
Laurenz> '_' indicates that a syllable goes over an additional note indicated by a
Laurenz> horizontal line. Thus
Laurenz> w: syll-a-ble
Laurenz> w: time__
Laurenz> both go over three notes. Naturally, I used combinations like
Laurenz> w: sum__-mer day_.
This doesn't look natural to me, because I've always put the hyphen
immediately after the first syllable.
Laurenz> which was meant to indicate that 'sum' goes over three, 'mer' over one and
Laurenz> 'day' over two notes. The period should not go over an extra note, of
Laurenz> course, but should be added after the line indicating the extension of day
Laurenz> over the next note.
And I treat punctuation as part of the word, so I'd write "day. _",
not "day_."
Laurenz> However, abcm2ps and abctab2ps both treated the '-' and the '.' in
Laurenz> 'sum__-mer day_.' as separate syllables so that 'sum__-mer day_.' overall
Laurenz> goes over 8 instead of 6 notes. (abc2mtex apparently doesn't accept w:
Laurenz> yet)
Right, abc2mtex has been completely unmaintained since before both V:
and w: were added to ABC as written in the real world.
Laurenz> My suggestion is to add the example
Laurenz> w: sum__-mer day_.
Laurenz> (or a similar one) to the abc standard and indicate that it should be
Laurenz> interpreted as indicated above, going over 6 notes altogether sum (3) mer
Laurenz> (1) day (2) .(0, at the end of the horizontal line)
Laurenz> What do you think?
I agree that the standard should be clearer about how these symbols
are interpreted, but I think in this case the abc2ps interpretation of
your entry is correct.
In other words:
any number of letters and non-significant punctuation make a
syllable
A space causes the start of a new syllable.
A - at the end of a word indicates that the next syllable is
part of the same word as the previous syllable. This has
typesetting implications in abc2ps, but there's no reason the
standard should go into them.
A * or an _ indicates that the preceding syllable is continued
on the next note. The difference is that the _ causes a line
to be typeset in the lyrics under the continuation note(s),
and the * does not.
The example of how I type lyrics that I sent in a separate post uses
both * and _, because there is a bug in abc2ps (have any of the clones
fixed this?) which causes:
w:sum- _ _ er
to look hideous. So I always type an asterix when it follows a hyphen.
And I agree that there should be an example of how to type lyrics with
melismas in the documentation.
--
Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ )
(617) 661-8097 fax: (801) 365-6574
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139
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