At 10:44 AM 06-04-2002 -0700, Don Parrish-Bell you wrote: >I haven't had the opportunity to try to encode anything yet, but I look >forward to doing >so. I'm saving the tons of posts from everyone so I can go back through >for hints on >various things when I do get to that point.
One thing to keep in mind is that ABC is not a program, but rather a notation for music that is text-based. There are various programs out there that interpret that notation and can generate printed scores or play music, and there are several people who use ABC directly when playing music (rather than first converting it to some other notation and playing from that). Most of your complaints are with specific programs or combinations of programs, not with ABC itself. >I have downloaded various things and used abc2Win and whatever behind the >scenes tool that >runs on one of the sites to create printable sheet music. The minor >complaint that I have >is that the measures seem to be awefully cramped together. >So I have been re-entering the sheet music into a program called MusicTime >(I know ... >blasphamy!). Is this cramping due to how the tune was originally encoded >in abc format or >is it just how the formatting tools work under Win98? The only part of ABC that I could see that would affect how "cramped" together a peice of music would look in staff notation is the length of individual lines. Most ABC to Staff converters I know of do not break lines of ABC into multiple lines of staff notation. Obviously, the same piece of music is going to look more cramped if written as 2 lines of 8 measures than 4 lines of 4 measures. If that doesn't seem to be the problem (i.e., MusicTime is using the same number of measures/line as abc2win), then it seems like a deficiency with the converter. > Platform independence is a good >thing for those using UNIX-based and whatever other things the rest of the >world might be >using (what are you guys in Europe using?), but maybe a bit better >formatting tool could >be developed for Windows. The note shapes tend to be very "low-res", >too. If the >graphics-based ones can printout clean-looking sheet music, seems like a >formatting tool >for abc could do the same thing. There are formatting tools for abc that can do the same, and some even work in both Unix and Win environments. One tool I use is abc2ps and its derivatives, which generates sheet music in PostScript from abc notation. PostScript is resolution-independent, so you should be able to get very crisp, high-res note shapes when printing to a laser printer, or when viewing onscreen. Other tools, like Muse, are full-fledged score-editing programs like I assume MusicTime is, but will read and write abc as well. >I read a few of the posts today talking about how quickly things can be >entered in abc >text. I can see how that might be true. Yes it takes a ridiculous amount >of time to have >to use the mouse to go grab the proper duration note each time and some >keyboard >short-cuts would be very handy for the GUI-based tools. Are there >keyboard short-cuts for >abc? Will there be if there aren't any now? "weirdPerfect" had all >those funny CTRL-xx >and ALT-xx things, but in many ways it was faster than MSWord for those of >us who learned >all the little quirky control strings. Since abc is a text-based format, any text-editor is suitable for entering and editing ABC. There is no reason for your fingers to leave the keyboard if you don't want it to. For instance, I am typing in a text-editor attached to my email client (Eudora) and I can, easily, simply write a tune in ABC like so: X: 1 T: C-Scale, once up and down M: 4/4 K: C cdef|gabc'-|c'z2c'|bagf|edc2| This isn't a very good tune, I'll admit, but it is ABC, and easily typed at that. >I like the little community of abcusers. Seems like you are all really >trying to make it >a decent tool. I'm sorry I can't contribute much to that effort other >than a few >suggestions for the wish list. Keep up the good work! We are creating several tools centered around the format, and several of us (myself included) simply make suggestions for the "wish list" and critique other suggestions for the wishlist without contributing any code. If you like what you see, hang around and have fun! >Don Parrish-Bell > >To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: >http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
