On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 11:54:25PM +0100, Phil Taylor wrote: > Bryan Creer wrote: > > >Unfortunately, to really to solve compatability problems you need a > >masochistic altruist who will go back and remove all the line-break !s > >from all the > >tune files created with abc2win over the last eight years or so which > >might annoy > >the people who chose to put them in. (I'm not volunteering.) > > Yeah, that's the rub. The thing to bear in mind is that we don't have to > stay compatible with abc2win, since the people who use that program don't > need the more advanced features which we are adding to the language. > On the other hand, we do have to maintain some compatibility with abc2win's > files, because they are priceless. What we must avoid is adding something > to the language which prevents new programs which conform to the newest > standard from being capable of dealing with abc2win's files.
What programs are currently capable of reading abc2win output, as is ? BarFly, I guess, since you're saying this. And, yes, it _is_ a point - if it does have that capability I can see you'd be reluctant to cut your users off from access to those files. But I also think it's a point that can be made too much of. Maybe I'm getting bad-tempered about this; but, I've never, not ever, been able to use abc2win files without having to edit them by hand first. abc2win introduced constructs, out of the blue, that the abc->ps family have never _been_ able to read. Some of them, particularly the mid-line ! linebreak, I would actually like to have the use of, as it turns out (and, I like abcm2ps's approach to mixed barline thingies like :|: - what's written is what gets printed. Not always what I want to see, but the basic idea seems right, clear, simple), if we could reach agrrement such that they were generally available - but my point here is that, to have a "standard" which makes it necessary to fiddle about with abc2win files before being able to use them is not to construct a new situation. It's where we've always been. Maybe it would be necessary (maybe it would be an improvement) to tell a program explicitly whether a user wanted to read abc2win or standard. -- 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
