>> Optional bars in the middle of a part, with the possibility of >> putting text over them such as "Play in line 2 only"? > I'm not sure what's being requested here. But I've seen optional bars > in bagpipe and some other music, written with the usual sort of > endings but with just the one bar bracketed. I wrote up a little > test fragment: > > X:1 > T:TEST: Optional bar > N:Optional bar inside a phrase > K:C > | CD EF |2 GA Bc || de fg |
I don't believe I've ever seen that in a pipe score. On the other hand *alternate* single bars are quite common. The alternate case can subsume the optional one, since one of the alternates could be empty. > It has seemed to me that there is a minor bug in abc here: There is > no clear way of indicating the end of an "ending". [...] use the > neglected ']' char for the end. > Like the '[', this would be optional, and would default in the > obvious manner. I don't see any obvious default here. Leaving it out is almost always going to be ambiguous. > But then you could write: > > | CD EF |[2 GA Bc ]| de fg | or using an empty alternate: | CD EF |[1 ]|[2 GA Bc ]| de fg | No need for a staff notation program to print the empty bar if the user doesn't want it. Note that there needs to be a semantic check that this thing really does occur within the scope of a repeat. We've discussed this before. I stick to the position I had then, which is that this feature is not as necessary as its prevalence in pipe music might indicate. Its biggest user was David Glen, and it nearly always occurs near the bottom of the page for scores that only just fit on one sheet. He wasn't very good at planning layout before he picked up the punches and burin. These days, we have lithium for people with that kind of impatience and computers to help those that won't take it. A notation whose main point is reproducing 19th century cockups isn't going to see much use. It's exceptionally difficult to learn to read it. =================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> =================== To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
