Phil taylor writes: | John Chambers wrote: | >Phil taylor writes: | >| * It is very common to see repeats written as: | >| abc |[1 abc :|[2 cba :| | > | >This is done because with most current ABC tools, it's the *only* way | >to indicate four times through. It's definitely crappy notation, but | >it's the best you can do if the software chokes on: | > abc |[1,3 abc :|[2,4 cba :| | | No, people use it sloppily where there is only one repeat.
Perhaps; there certainly is a lot of sloppiness. But I and others have used it knowingly, because it's the only way to get a clue onto the paper that the section is to be played more than twice. I've stopped doing this since I implemented [1,3 and [2,4 endings. But I haven't gotten around to upgrading all my files to use this. | >BTW, where does the 1.6 standard explicitly forbid this final :|? I | >don't seem to see anything at all on the topic, only the statement | >that :| marks the end of a repeated section. This would imply that | >the above notation is legal, since that bar line *is* the end of a | >repeated section. | | You are quite right. I could have sworn that the standard forbade the | use of :| to terminate the second repeat. Maybe it was in an earlier | version of the standard? I don't think so. The subject of endings and repeats was always quite sketchy. This isn't really a criticism of Chris, since his effort was obviously a prototype. Also, he was mostly concerned with British Isles folk music, where there's not a lot of need for such notation. I do remember noticing right off that the documentation on this left a bit to be desired, and obvious a lot of software didn't do much with the idea. But after all these years, and with the growing interest in using ABC for other kinds of music, it's maybe time we did something about it. In any case, the :| at the end of the second ending is conventional when there are 3rd and 4th endings. It makes sense that at the end of the 2nd ending you'd tell the reader to go back and do it again. Now we just need the conventional notation to indicate what to play for the other endings. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
