(I think we *need* to specify the melody-note in some way
because the w:-lines need it for alignment.)
You're right about that. One of the few things the iabc currently gets right is aligning words with the notes. I use longest note = length now but I could easily change it to shortest.
> melody&bass pieces, you'll have done a helluva lot of [G,,8B,,8D,8]
> stuff that would have been more readably written [G,,B,,D,]8 .
That's kind of a parsing headache. But you can also go:
[L:1/2][g,,b,,d][L:1/8]
That's a bigger parsing headache but we have to support that anyway. In general I'm against adding yet another way of doing something we can already do according to the current draft standard, I'd rather spend my time making iabc do new things.