On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 06:26:16AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > There is no mention that I can find of when the !...! notation was introduced > or when standard 1.7.6 was released as a draft but it looks as if abc2win has > a prior claim on "!". I don't see how Jim Vint can be accused of "gratuitous > violations" of a standard that didn't even exist. > > The fact is that both "!" as a line break and "!...!" are in use so let's > develop a no blame culture and work out how to get round it. More to the point, > can we try and work out a system to make sure we all know what others are > doing so this sort of thing doesn't happen in the future?
I hated abc2win's "!" usage when it appeared. ABC tunes started appearing using some consruct I'd never heard of, never seen any discussion of, that the software I was using just wouldn't handle. If I wanted to look at an abc2win tune, I had to re-edit it by hand before any of the programs I was using could make sense of it. I saw it, and still see it, as the prime example of what a pain in the arse it is when people implement their own bright ideas for extensions with no concensus. It broke compatability quite horribly, and wasted manymany hours of my time, and probably other peoples' too. But I gather that jcabc2ps, at least, now copes with this (? I really haven't been keeping up) so maybe I won't have to do any more re-editing. On the assumption that I'm _able_ to use "!" as a staff-break, anywhere in a line of abc, Jack's argument & examples make the case very strongly, to my mind, that this is a good and useful thing to be able to do. I might even start using it myself, if I could be sure other peoples' software would know what it meant. Just so long as we end up with agreement, among both people and software, about what things mean ... -- Richard Robinson "The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
