[tunes using ! as mid-source-line staff-line-break] > ok, I guess that *almost* all of those tunes are from folk > tradition.
The kind of tunes where it would make the biggest difference to me aren't - I'm thinking of the late-Baroque-style variation sets on Scots tunes by James Oswald, for example. These retain the basic eight-bar structure of the original, but add a lot of complexity in ornamentation and rhythmic variation. It makes it a lot easier to see what's going on if you lay the source out to align the notes of the theme with corresponding points in the variations, but it takes a line width of well over 100 columns to incorporate enough space to do it, and if the staff notation you printed followed the ABC source linebreaks it would be almost unusable from variations in note density. One reason for supporting readable ABC source, laid out with 4- or 8-bar phrases to a line, is for blind readers. Braille devices usually work one line at a time, so it helps if that line both forms a musically meaningful unit and is also not cluttered up with noise symbols like !break!. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760 <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack> * food intolerance data & recipes, Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM "Embro, Embro". ------> off-list mail to "j-c" rather than "abc" at this site, please <------ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
