David Barnert writes: | Laura Conrad wrote: | >But it might not be a bad idea for printing programs to provide | >an option to not print an initial |:. ... | | This certainly suggests that there is a compelling reason for abc | to require a |: at the beginning of a tune (if the first notes are | to be repeated) even if the printed source omits it. I must admit | I'm at a loss as to what this reason is. Why shouldn't abc assume | that if it can't find a |: before a :| it repeats from the | beginning, as Beethoven's orchestras did?
I can't think of a reason either. It's not like there's a serious programming problem finding the start of the tune. In any case, we're dealing with a population of users who can't even be persuaded to include an initial X line in a tune. What makes anyone think we could ever persuade those users to include an initial |: when "standard" printed music doesn't have it? A somewhat trickier problem is that there's currently a fair amount of abc tunes that don't even use the initial repeat on second and later sections. Some users seems to think that :| is a fine way to start a repeated section. The best approach here might be an education campaign, though I'd have my doubts about its general success. This is probably one of many situations where abc players will always have to deal with malformed abc. The most common cases can probably be dealt with by having players "guess" that a :| should be considered the start of any subsequent :| if there is no other start-repeat symbol. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
