>> Given that ABC is text-line-based, *can* a program go straight to a >> tune, random-access-like, without having read all the intervening lines? > random-access-"like"... yes, it's possible. My JedABC has an index mode > that does what you want; so does BarFly in "Split Screen Mode".
But BarFly will have read the entire file before it goes into split- screen mode, and I suspect JedABC will have done too. You would need something like ISAM to do what Richard is talking about, and I don't think anybody is implementing ABC software in MVS Cobol or in S3 on ICL VME. Richard's tunebook is the only ABC file I've got on this machine that requires me to increase BarFly's memory allocation above the default (and it's very slow to load). But with a modern machine you'd need to have getting on for a gigabyte of ABC in one file before random access mattered. I don't believe the entire world typing together can create ABC source fast enough to out-scale the computer industry. BarFly currently has an interesting bug (which probably nobody but me has ever encountered) in which certain kinds of text at the end of a file can screw up the processing of a tune near the start, even with hundreds of intervening tunes. So it's not even behaving like a one- pass compiler in which only preceding text affects the context. Phil probably has the underlying architectural support to add a COME FROM control construct if he wanted, like an inverse da capo (has anybody ever used such a thing in musical notation?). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
