Henrik Norbeck wrote: >Jack Campin wrote: >> > U:M=!tenuto! >> Doesn't work in BarFly - that redefinition of M isn't permitted as >> it doesn't know what "!tenuto!" is (and hopefully never will do). > >What's the problem? !tenuto! conforms well to the proposed >standard. Actually, BarFly should simply ignore anything between >!! that it does not understand, because this makes the abc >standard esay to extend. Sometime in the future someone might >come up with the bright idea that !asdf! should mean something >too.
BarFly had a system of redefinable symbols using the U: field, and a system of macros two years before John Atchley wrote the "draft" standard. Unfortunately he wrote his proposals, and persuaded Chris to put them up on the abc home page without taking the trouble to see what the existing programs did. When he wrote that section of his standard, he confused and conflated redefinable symbols and macros (can anybody apart from BarFly users actually understand the difference?). He also introduced the use of the exclamation mark delimiter, which is a disaster, both for the readability of abc and because it conflicts with all the old abc2win files which use this character for a totally different purpose. >BTW, how long is this new standard going to be only "proposed"? >Can we get along to deciding something now, for #%&/=+#% sake! >Otherwise we will land where HTML is (Microsoft standard, >Netscape standard). As far as I'm concerned it can stay "proposed" until somebody re-writes or removes the section on redefinable symbols and macros and declares the use of the exclamation mark delimiter as deprecated. I don't have any problems with the rest of it, but I've been arguing against that section ever since it first appeared. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
