On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Richard Robinson wrote: > > But, as has been said before, ABC is used for a lot more than just > rendering sheet music. One advantage it has, to me, over just about > everything else I've looked at is the way it offers a usable way of storing > _lots_ of tunes, rather than just concentrating on how to do one tune. > Which depends on being able to note what country it comes from, what > "sort" of tune it is, etc etc. People may have used the O: R:, etc etc, > fields in "non-standard" ways, but if we drop them, all of this will > become non-standard, and people will be forced to invent their own ways > of representing this. So there'll be even less clarity than now, and > ABC collections will become less readable, to anyone except the author, > than they are now.
We could define a cataloguing system in the standard, or we could leave it up to individual tune collectors. I notice you use a lot of %% fields in your files. Jack Campin uses slightly nonstandard headers. John Chambers uses subdirectories for origin and then rhythm. It's tough to pigeonhole tunes into any category. I've got a book that says Reel Beatrice is French-Canadian and a CD that says an Italian wrote it... and who says you can't play it like a hornpipe? And the waters really get muddy when you get into Irish/English/Scottish/Welsh/Cornish reels/hornpipes/strathspeys/polkas/marches... I keep referring to "sheet music" with no mention of player programs. The beautiful thing about written music is that it's open to interpretation! Player programs will always sound cheesy, they'll always screw up implicit lead-ins and such... why complicate the format by making concessions to them? Use Abc+ for that. Anyway, if there's a good reason to keep R: and O: then let's keep them, if only for everyone but the transcriber to ignore. I don't really care, as long as the actual music notation is unambiguous. Tom To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
