Greetings all,
I'm in a software engineering course this semester, and we've decided we'd
like to go at adding another product to realm of available 'abc' tools.
We're planning on developing using MS Visual C++ 6.0 Studio, and using MFC
to quickstart our GUI program development, but writing the underlying
functions in such a way as to make it easily portable to X and MacOS for
eventual parallel development.
I don't know if the following is something that will infuriate people, or
not, but it's what we're planning on doing.
Right now, the idea is based mostly on writing new file format which will
implement the current standard of ABC. We want to write our program to
implement fully, and not expand at all on or deviate at all from the
specifications of the current standard. However, we wish to develop a new
file format which will contain standard abc notation _plus_ layout
information generated by our program. Speculatively, we would call it
something like abl (abc with layout), but we've not gone far as of yet to
discover what registered existing filetypes are out there. We anticipate
using a base 16bit unicode file format, and eventually writing an object
standard so that .abl files might be linked and embedded into such
things as webpages via browser plugins, Document editors such as MS Word,
and Corel Star Office, etc.
I'm writing primarily to try to gauge the response we might expect from
the abc community.
We are students, and the program scope of this project mostly involves
developing a simple framework, but, as it is a software engineering class,
and the goals aren't just to create, but to implement good methodology,
planning, development, and foresight, we are writing with the idea of
continuing to develop this software after semester end, provided it is
well received by the abc community, and those who oversee the
administration of the abc standard.
I write secondarily, to find out if anyone with previous experience would
be willing to make themselves available to answer questions, or offer
advice in the development area. We are particularly vague on what if any
'filetype' registration administration exists for registering...
1. Windows filetypes (and 3 digit extensions)
2. Mime types
3. Macintosh Filetype & Creator codes.
And, how one goes about finding unused, or obsoletely used extentions,
abbreviations, etc. Ie. It would be rather foolish of us to start
creating a filetype to be identified by the .doc extension. I rather
doubt most people would explicitly go out of their way to redfine registry
keys so that our software superceeded Microsoft Word.
This program is not your default abc-with-layout viewer. Would you
like to set it to be? [Yes] [No] [Never show this question again]
:)
Ie., we don't wish to step on any toes, or code ourselves into any
corners. I think we've got some good ideas to promote the abc format, and
provide some good if somewhat alternative usability for folks out there.
Thanks for any feedback.
//Christian
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