On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 11:50:19AM +0000, Tom Novelli wrote: > > 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...
Yes. I use more fof them, privately, but filter them out before publishing - the ones I leave are those that "might" (conceivably) be of some informational use to others. Well, %%Copyright is _vital_. I also make *huge* use of O:, R:, and wish I'd started using D:, B:. etc earlier ... I'm working on a new update at the moment. One change I'm making is that I've noticed Guido's updated definition of "F:", which seems very sensible, so I'm replacing my %%OriginalCollection field with it. People use ABC for such different purposes ... I use it for storing tunes, and (crucially) being able to find them again, search them, look for things, build lists ... has no-one else ever wanted a list of all the tunes they can find from one particular country, of one particular "sort" ? How could you do that, if everuybody makes up their own fields to store those facts in ? > 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... Yes, yes, pigeonholing can be a moveable feast. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be possible. There's nothing (or there shouldn't be anything) to stop you writing 2 separate lines R:Reel R:Hornpipe or O:French-Canadian O:Italian if you want to, and even add a N: explaining the confusion. Likewise there's nothing to stop you _not_ writing such lines if you don't want to. But I would suggest that tunes that do give such info in a standard form will be of more use to other people, not to mention possible future TuneFinders, and other such software. > 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. Other people may have uses for player programs, I'll leave it up to them to pursue that, I don't use them much. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about being able to use ABC to organise collections of tunes. > 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. Well, *no* They're much more generally useful than that. -- 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
