On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 01:00:26AM +0000, John Chambers wrote: > Richard Robinson writes: > | But, one little thought occurred to me, re the much-discussed and > | little-agreed "!" staff-break. With no prejudice as to whether this ought > | to exist, etc etc (except that, the more I think about it, the more I'd > | like it, so, if it helps ...) it needn't conflict with the !decoration! > | notation at all. Generalising from all the given examples of this, they > | don't any of them contain any whitespace. Even if they did, maybe it > | would be acceptable to say that such ornament-names may not begin with > | whitespace, ie that there should be no whitespace between the opening > | "!" and the first symbol of the ornament-name ? > | And I can't think of any way in which whitespace following a "!" > | staff-break could have any implications for the music (?? go on, > | someone ...), so I think these 2 constructions could be mixed, on the > | same line of text, without any ambiguity, by including spaces after > | staff-breaks if necessary. It would be a slight restriction on > | flexibility of abc layout, but that's the worst (only) catch I can > | think of, and it would get round the conflict. > > That would be a good idea, if we could get abc2win modified > to follow it.
That's a "No", then ? > The examples tossed out recently include > several with a ! in the middle without any adjacent white > space. I especially liked the one that had ... :|!: .... grin. That's ingenious. Not even :|!|: ? Yes; but if people were told it might need a space after it to clarify things, if they were mixing it with !decorations!, maybe they'd see the point ? > > I also wonder if !da Capo! is an approved annotation. If > not, it should be (along with !d.C.!). Of course, it > doesn't start with a space. But I can easily see abc2win > generating at least the "!da Ca" portion. People writing > parsers will look at this and groan. Far too much ad-hoc > lookahead for a dumb parser. Yes; and no. It only starts to become a problem if there's more than one ! in a line of text ? And if there are 2, even the p and the o wouldn't resolve it, since they could have been U:'d as ornaments. So a space after a ! would be necessary (and sufficient) if there's more than one ! in a line ... I'm not sure if !da Capo! exists, either, but I'd think it ought to, if any of them do. People could well want to write it. > Of course, traditional music notation is about as ad-hoc a > language as you'll find. (Except for Intercal. Maybe. ;-) I'm suddenly, for I don't-know-what reason, reminded of the Ada fed Gabe a bad cabbage thread, of several years back. -- 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
