| I'm having problems getting the variant ending feature to work for me.
| This works for 1 and 2 being different:
|
| "A"A,2A, B,2C |1"D"D3 z3 :||2 "D"D6 |]
|
| But I can't seem to find a way to indicate 1-3 are the same with 4 being
| different. I've tried encapsulating it in quotes, brackets, parentheses...
|
| Am I missing something, or is the ABC standard missing something?
What you're missing is that the ABC standard is very sketchy here,
and what you want isn't very widely implemented. Most abc software
implements only first and second endings. It turns out that the abc
standard doesn't say what endings software must handle. It just says
that the ending notation exists, and gives one example that has a
first and second ending. Most implementers have taken this to mean
that they don't need to implement anything else. Indeed, in
traditional folk music of the British Isles (which was abc's first
uses), you don't see many alternate endings at all, and you'll search
long and hard for a third or fourth ending. So people working with
that sort of music don't notice that there's something missing.
Since I'm also involved with styles like trad Scandinavian music
("How can you possibly write music without using 3rd and 4th
endings?"), I made my own clone of abc2ps (jcabc2ps) which implements
endings like |1,3 and |1-3 and so on. I can even do random text in
endings, though that's a different story and is probably worth trying
to get some standards on.
One problem with my doing this, of course, is that my Scand tunes
tend to come out with the endings wrong when you feed them to other
abc tools. But there's not much I can do about that. And when we've
discussed the topic in the past, it's pretty obvious that the
overwhelming majority consider the subject boring. "Who the hell
needs THAT? Let's discuss something interesting instead."
I wonder what other abc tools implement |1,3 and |1-3 now? Does any
tool implement any endings beyond this? One thing I can write is:
... :|["Coda" ... |]
To be unambiguous, you would need to use the full syntax here, with
the bracket, so that the quoted ending text isn't mistaken for a
chord. But it's sufficient to handle all the cases that I know of,
and easy for a program to parse. I'd have to warn users that this is
an extension of the abc syntax, not supported by any standard that I
know of, so it probably won't make sense to other abc tools.
One of the things that perhaps qualifies as "broken" in current abc
is that you often see the notation
|: ... |1 ... :|2 ... :|
This prints out just like you'd expect, with a repeat symbol before
the 2nd ending and also at the end of the section. This is often used
as a kludge to hint that the section should be played four times,
because this is actually accepted by most abc software. But it
produces a real musical disaster when you put the music on stands
before a group of musicians. Half the group will notice that final
repeat and go back for the 3rd time through the phrase. The other
half will either not notice it, or will treat it as an obvious typo
(because the ending brackets clearly say that the phrase is to be
done exactly twice), and will barge ahead. The music then collapses
on the floor and you have to stop and explain that, yes, this is
atrocious notation, but it's all that the software will permit.
This example really should be:
|: ... |1,3 ... :|2,4 ... :|
Unfortunately, very few abc programs accept this. It's not an actual
violation of the standard. But the standard doesn't say that abc
programs have to handle this, so most don't.
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