These days there are many software packages enabling everybody to produce tablatures. Many of us do, for free on our websites or in home-made inexpensive editions. Not all of these tablatures are as beautiful, or as easy to read. For the free or inexpensive editions that's fine with me; if the content is interesting I'll read from anything, or make my own version if it's too revolting. I'm glad I could find the music. But in looking at not so inexpensive editions from 'real' publishers, I am repeatedly struck by their far from perfect tablatures, and staff notation for that matter, as well. For staff notation, there are guidelines that help in making decisions on how to solve notational questions. The better engraving software will automatically follow these guidelines. For an example, have a look at http://mpa.org/music_notation/. These guidelines should present musicians with more or less standard sheet music. The benefits are obvious: it's fine to be able to read facsimiles, necessary for us, obviously, but when you're playing in an orchestra and are presented with your part on the day of the rehearsal or the concert, it's nice you don't have to spend time in deciphering what the editor meant.
So, in stead of complaining about the poor output of such and such software, engraver or publisher, wouldn't it be nice to have some guidelines to help all of us make better tablatures? Yes, that should include simple things like b's and d's running into each other, g's that look like a's with an ornament, i's that lack a dot (or are these l's?). There are many, many aspects that are time and place dependant - I like to read my Ballard in another font than my Gaultier, I like different flag rules for Dowland than for Weiss - but I wouldn't want ciphers run into each other in either, and clumsy diapasson notation is unwanted in all. The various solutions people have found to notate ornaments could use a little standarisation, too. Perhaps it would be a list of the obvious, but it seems to me many of us could use a little check-list of the obvious to help us produce better tablatures. Did Alain Veylit or Francesco Tribioli ever write down some of the guidelines they drew up when making their software? That would perhaps be the obvious starting point for my proposal. David -- ******************************* David van Ooijen [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.davidvanooijen.nl ******************************* To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
