Bryan Creer wrote: >Frank Nordberg wrote - > >>No it isn't. ABC2WIN's ! syntax is breaking (no pun intended) the >>"official" ABC standard (as Chris Walshaw published it). > >A) According to the chronology compiled by John Chambers on the abc home >page, Chris Walshaw's published standard followed about 16 months after >the first >release of ABC2WIN.
Perhaps as a separate publication, but it was always part of the documentation for abc2mtex. >B) There is nothing in that standard that forbids the use of ! as a line >break. It is an extension. It is something he saw a need for and his >users found >useful. It's not so much the use of ! to force a line break, as the ignoring of line ends in the text that breaks the standard. All other programs have placed musical line breaks where the text line breaks are, except when preceded by a backslash. >>The differences >>between the other major ABC applications are all about *extensions* to >>the standard: additional features different developers saw the need for >>and incorporated in their programs independent from each other and in >>different ways. > >Which is why it is important for developers to be aware of what others are >doing. Phil Taylors extensions to the V: command were largely >incompatible with >the original and you speak of different syntaxes for BarFly and abc2mps >extensions. If precedence is at all important, BarFly handled multivoice abc before abcm2ps started. I think only abc2midi preceded BarFly in that respect. >If the standard follows the software, how is it supposed to cope if >different developers lead in different, and possibly incompatible, >directions? >If the answer is by following one particular piece of software, that puts all >the others into retrospective breach of the standards which is what seems to >have happened to ABC2WIN. > >Irwin Oppenheim wrote - > >>The problem with ABC2WIN is .... > >>C) that is >>nevertheless advertized on the ABC homepage as being >>the leading ABC application for the Windows platform! > >From my experience that would appear to be true. (At the moment.) > >I'm not trying to defend ABC2WIN; there is a lot wrong with it. I just find >the hostility towards it deeply irrational. It causes us a lot of trouble. We can't fix it and we can't persuade its author to fix it. We used not to be hostile towards it; in its early days it was widely admired, but then its author stopped contributing to this list, and wouldn't fix even simple things (like the fact that it misinterprets the Q: field and plays everything at the wrong tempo). He's left us a messy legacy of files that we have to deal with. Not really irrational, just pointless. Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
