Jack, It appears that the font in abc2win isn't a fixed width font (not sure if that's the default or my poor selection...). When I bring up some tunes in WordPad which uses fixed width font the left margins are out of whack. Maybe that's what you're seeing. "!" in the middle of the line adds to the parser confusion that has been discussed lately. Some who don't know about |!<newline> are tempted to throw it out altogether which would be a shame.
I think (and I realise that this opinion isn't shared by all) that notation programs should *not* staff break upon <newline>. Some have already brought up the compelling argument of the "email daemon" that indiscriminately adds newlines. There are also the well-intentioned but misguided applications that automatically clip lines off at 79 characters that further exasperates the problem. Most notation programs are pretty good about figuring out how much music can comfortably fit on a staff. I think by default we should let them do as they please unless they see a |!<newline> which is our way of saying "break because I say so". Just an opinion. -John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jack Campin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 5:51 PM Subject: Re: [abcusers] ABC examples with bang? > John Norvell wrote: > > All of the tunes (hundreds) in my private collection use |!(newline) > > as the line terminator. > > Attached are a few examples. > > Which all look a bit odd, as if you'd formatted them carefully for > source-readability and then some gremlin intervened to insert random > amounts of leading whitespace in each line. How did it get there? > > (Open them with a text editor to see it, I assume abc2win is hiding > it from you). > > Could you post a screenshot of how this source looks to you when > you're editing it? > > > > I've never heard of using ! in the middle of a line as a terminator > > and think that we should deprecate that usage. > > Why? Lots of abc2win users do it and as I've been arguing, a lot > more people ought to, whatever the software they have. If the ! is > only used on the end of a line it adds no new expressive feature to > the language. > > > In this line > > BBe2A4 e2 :| Z ||! > > what does the Z mean? > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- > 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 To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
