Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[Guido Gonzato]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, John Fattaruso wrote:

> As someone primarily interested in typesetting choral music, I was very 
> interested in the voice overlay capability with the '&' syntax that 
> emerged in abcm2ps some time ago. Many times in choral music we will 
> have a vocal line splitting into two or three lines for only a few 
> measures here and there, and abc shouldn't require defining a whole 
> different voice for just those few measures.
> 
> I did not see any mention of this capability in the new 2.0.0 standard, 
> however. Maybe I missed it?

in the draft proposal I published I decided to stick to feratures that are
already implemented by major applications only. '&' is a very useful
feature (I'm a singer too), but AFAIK only abcm2ps supports it. Irwin
Oppenheim has extended the draft proposal with a more aggressive stance,
please wait while we're fixing it.

Later,
  Guido =8-)

-- 
Guido Gonzato, Ph.D.  - Linux System Manager
Universita' di Verona (Italy), Facolta' di Scienze MM. FF. NN.
Ca' Vignal II, Strada Le Grazie 15, 37134 Verona (Italy)
Tel. +39 045 8027990; Fax +39 045 8027928 --- Timeas hominem unius libri

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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, John Chambers wrote:

> [V:1] | A2 E2 G2 A2 | A B c d e f g  a | g2 f2 e2 a2 |]
> [V:1+]| | A A A A A A A  A |
> [V:1+]| | A G F E D C B, A,|

While it is a nice idea, it is impossible to implement.
The reason is that the ABC standard allows a voice to
be broken up in any conceivable way, and different
voices may appear in any order. Therefore an ABC parser
cannot be sure how to synchronise voices, unless they
are written out in full.

Concluding: I think the & operator is the best solution
for notating temp. voices.

Irwin
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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[I. Oppenheim]

Thank you all for your input!
This is what I'll put in the revision of the standard:

<<
Voice overlay

The & operator may be used to temporarily overlay
several voices within one measure. The & operator sets
the time point of the music back to the previous bar
line, and the notes which follow it form a temporary
voice in parallel with the preceding one.  This may
only be used to add one complete bar's worth of music
for each &.

Example:

A2 E2 G2 A2 | A B c d e f g a   &\
  A A A A A A A A   &\
  A G F E D C B, A, |]

In meter free music, invisible bar signs `[|]' may be
used instead of regular ones.
>>

Acceptable?


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[I. Oppenheim]

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003, Jack Campin wrote:

> paralleling the not-anchored-to- a-barline repeat
> syntax

You mean something like | [1 A B [|] [2 C D | ?


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

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 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] Installing abcm2ps on OS X

[I. Oppenheim]

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003, Jack Campin wrote:

> Try
>   PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin
>   export PATH

No Jack, that's bourne shell syntax!!!
A day ago I gave the correct solution for tcsh in a
separate posting.

> You might also want to change your shell to something less
> squirmily haveanicedayish than tcsh.  chsh is the command to
> do the change; bash is pretty reasonable

At the moment, bash is the de facto standard in the
UNIX community. You can change to it with the following
command:

chsh `which bash`

Note the back quotes.

The settings file of bash is called .bash_profile and
resides in your home directory.

You can use the Bourne shell syntax described above to
add a path to your .bash_profile:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

or you can add

alias abcm2ps='/usr/local/bin/abcm2ps'


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[I. Oppenheim]

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003, Jack Campin wrote:

>  A2 E2 G2 A2 [&[& A B c d e f g  a  &\
>   A A A A A A A  A  &\
>   A G F E D C B, A, ]& D2 E2 A2 ...

For meter free music one could use _invissible_ bars,
like this:

>  A2 E2 G2 A2 [|]  A B c d e f g  a  &\
>   A A A A A A A  A  &\
>   A G F E D C B, A, [|] D2 E2 A2 ...

I think your use of the \ continuation makes for very
readable music here.


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[Tom Keays]

Oooh.  I like Jack's suggestion.  Mainly because nothing would have to be
changed.  If it ain't broke and all that...

However, I don't think it has to be as complicated as Jack has it.

> A2 E2 G2 A2 [&[& A B c d e f g  a  &\
> A A A A A A A  A  &\
> A G F E D C B, A, ]& D2 E2 A2 ...

If the standard already says that

A2 E2 G2 A2|A B c d e f g a & A A A A A A A A & A G F E D C B, A,|]

is ok, then 

A2 E2 G2 A2|A B c d e f g  a &\
A A A A A A A  A &\
A G F E D C B, A,|]

must also be ok!

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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[John Chambers]

Tom Keays writes:
|
| OK.  I liked John's idea of transient voices as he expressed them: [V:1+].
| While using separate lines for each transient voice certainly improves
| readability, it is much harder to write.  I really like the compactness of
| the original.
|
| So, how about combining the two ideas?
|
|
| Or use Richard's lower case idea [v:1+].

Or, if we're going for ideas, we could note that we could just
omit the stuff after the V: to say that it should be added to
the second voice.  This would produce:

A2 E2 G2 A2 |A B c d e f g a [V:] A A A A A A A A [V:] A G F E D C B, A,|]

This is syntactically identical to the & usage, of course.
Or my earlier example could become:

[V:1] A2 E2 G2 A2 | A B c d e f g  a | g2 f2 e2 a2 |]
[V:]  | A A A A A A A  A |
[V:]  | A G F E D C B, A,|

This is obviously wordier, but easier to sight read.

Any more ideas?


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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[John Chambers]

Anselm Lingnau writes:
|
| My little project is ABCifying the tunes from the RSCDS dance books.
| Some of the tunes have a second voice every so often (say, in four
| bars out of twenty-four), and the »&« feature saves me a lot of typing
| in [V:2] bits that are mostly empty.

Hey, glad to see you're doing this. I've volunteered in the past, but
the  RSCDS didn't respond.  So I've just done a lot of them in my own
way, which usually amounts to extracting just the melody and ignoring
bass  lines and decorative "voicelets".  And adding my own chords (or
simplifying theirs). And comparing the tunes with other books, to get
a merged version.  So my collection isn't a faithful transcription of
the RSCDS booklets.

If you're trying to transcribe the entire RSCDS  versions  of  tunes,
you  might  want  to start commenting here about the abc limitations.
You'll probably see a lot of them.  Keyboard music is the worst case.

I've also  mentioned  the  idea  of  an  RSCDS  ABC  project  in  the
strathspey  list,  but  it always seems to morph into a discussion of
the possible copyright problems.   I  suspect  that  this  is  a  red
herring.   People  contribute  their  tunes  and  dances to the RSCDS
because they want them played and danced, not because they expect  to
collect  royalties.   I'll  predict  that  not a single tune or dance
deviser will object to having them online.  And your if your site has
any  impact  on sales of the booklet, it will be a small increase due
to the publicity.  (I'm assuming that you'll include  "www.rscds.org"
in each tune's header.  ;-)

Are you doing the dance descriptions, too?  That's a LOT of typing.

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Re: [abcusers] Installing abcm2ps on OS X

[Jack Campin]

[attempting to housetrain a Unix system]

> So I type
>
> PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin
> echo $PATH
>
> and it says
>
> /bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:
>
> No good.

Try

  PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin
  export PATH

You might also want to change your shell to something less
squirmily haveanicedayish than tcsh.  chsh is the command to
do the change; bash is pretty reasonable though my fave back
when I was using Unix a lot was ksh (which just does what you
tell it without trying to get creative).

-
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Re: Subject: Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[John Chambers]

John Walsh writes:
|   On the subject of bangs and stars for linebreaks and
| decorations...I haven't been following it closely, and now I admit to
| being a bit puzzled as to the status of what's being decided. It
| seems to me that using ! for both a hard linebreak and for ! ... ! in the
| same tune is asking for trouble.  Using spaces to help distinguish them
| (did I see that suggested?) will lead to really frustrated users who can't
| understand why abc refuses to behave as they expect

What seems to have happened is that I and a few  others  pointed  out
that  we  don't  really have a serious problem with the two uses of !
right now, because a simple heuristic can tell which meaning was used
in  a  tune.   But  some people misinterpreted this to mean that both
could be legal in the standard language.  But using both in a  single
tune is a parsing disaster.

This sort of situation arises in software standardization efforts all
the  time.  Vendors X, Y and Z implement the standard, with their own
favorite extensions.  Each extension is fine on its own, and it's not
difficult  for  software  to  distinguish them (especially if there's
some sort of id to test).  But they can't all be implemented  in  the
same software for some reason.

In such cases, it's normal for X, Y and Z (and  their  customers)  to
dig  in  their  heels and insist that the standard follow their lead.
The standard committee (or voting population) eventually has to  just
shrug  and make a decision.  That decision might be to not add any of
the extensions to the standard.  More often, a scheme is  worked  out
that  forces  one  or more of the vendors to revise their software if
they want to be able to claim standard compliant.

In our case, one use of ! was  implemented,  but  nobody  except  the
users  of one tool was aware of it.  Even after I noticed the funny !
char in some tunes, it took me a couple of years to discover what  it
meant, since the tunes made sense if I just ignored it.  Then another
(very public) discussion of annotaions started,  and  the  suggestion
came up to use ! as a quote char, because it wasn't being used in abc
yet. As far as most of us knew, it was unused, and was available.  So
several  other  important  abc  tools  started  recognizing the !...!
construct, and it became a de-facto extension to the language.

We could change all those programs to use a different delimiter,  and
edit all the abc that uses !...! to use the new delimiter.  Or we can
ignore the conflict, and make  !...!  the  standard.   This  wouldn't
actually  be all that bad an idea, because the simple heuristic still
works.

The one thing that really won't work is permitting both in one tune.

It's likely that abc2win won't be changed to match any new  standard,
as  it  wasn't changed to match the 1.6 "standard".  But this doesn't
make that much difference, as we'll just need some bits  of  code  to
spot  the  abc2win  !  and  ignore  it.  And if Jim decides to update
abc2win, or passes the code to someone else, we can strongly  suggest
that it be updated to the standard.

My feeling is that the active developers shouldn't be held back by  a
popular  but obsolete program that isn't being maintained.  This is a
"slippery slope", as the media calls it, and will  just  invite  more
such  problems  in  the future.  The practical approach is to add the
!...! notation to the standard, accept that there  are  old  programs
that  aren't  compatible  with  this and other minor points, and note
that there's a simple workaround in this case.

For that matter, we have lots of other  "standard"  features  of  abc
that aren't implemented by some programs. And cases like continuation
that are done differently by different programs.  It's not that big a
deal.  We can just decide what the standard should be, and use social
pressure to try to get programs up to date.  Or not.




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Re: [abcusers] Readability of abc

[Jack Campin]

> I won't say there's no reason to read abc notation at all, but I can
> say that I know a substantial community of traditional musicians in
> New Hampshire who use abc, and all use it to display musical notation,
> to listen to the tune in question and to exchange tunes; none use it
> to read directly.  I suspect our usage pattern is pretty typical of
> the traditional music community in general.

You know you've got it right when somebody turns up at a session with
a tune on paper as a prompt - and it's your ABC on a slip the size of
a bus ticket.  I've had that happen to me.

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Re: [abcusers] Help - getting ABC files on BarFly

[Jack Campin]

>> Hmm, apparently UNIX is not the only OS that can be
>> somewhat less than intuitive :-(
> Touché!
> In practice most Mac users will never have to mess with
> file signatures.  Problems will only arise when you import
> files by unusual routes, e.g. when you have two different
> operating systems on the same machine.

The HTML files for my "Embro, Embro" CD-ROM had been through
five different signatures, sometimes twice, before they went
through the burner.  Most of it went BBEdit -> WriteNow -> MS
Word -> BBEdit -> Nisus -> BBEdit -> Nisus -> Netscape over a
period of five years, with odd bits generated by Acta, BarFly,
SimpleText, Anarcho, Eudora, MSDOS text utilities and six
different web browsers, all with corresponding creator codes
at the start.

I have never been without at least two file-type-tweaking
utilities while doing all this.  My favourites are TextChanger
(free with BBEdit Lite) for bulk changes to many files and the
shareware finder-enhancer extension Snitch for one-offs.

There is a great utility called "Glidel" (written by someone in
France) which, combined with a hierarchical Apple Menu launcher
(I use BeHierarchic) lets you drag an arbitrary document onto an
arbitrary application: click down on the document icon, wiggle
mouse, let go when over the application menu label.  This is
wonderful when you're developing content with an application
that is not the one the reader is going to use to look at it -
e.g. edit HTML in Nisus Writer and drag it onto any browser to
preview it.

I suspect that if I ever get OS X I will be writing five-page
Korn shell scripts to control this sort of activity.  I was
probably an Indian stationmaster in a previous life.

Despite this kind of complication the Mac type/creator system
is in fact helpful.

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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[Jack Campin]

>> Voice overlay
>> The & operator may be used to temporarily overlay several voices
>> within one measure. The & operator separates these voices from
>> each other.
> My take on it is that the & operator sets the time point
> of the music back to the previous bar line, and the notes
> which follow it form a temporary voice in parallel with
> the preceding one.  I suspect that this should only be used
> to add one complete bar's worth of music for each &.

Assuming you would only ever want to do this in music with barlines?
Really?  Surely there are monophonic chants where voices split for a
brief imitative Alleuia or Amen, for example?  Or unmeasured guitar
music? - I'd expect guitar and lute pieces to see the largest use of
this feature.

Why not some explicit start point? - paralleling the not-anchored-to-
a-barline repeat syntax, use [& maybe?  And perhaps a terminator to
help sanity-checker utilities work out that the same duration had been
provided for each voice, maybe ]& ?

I don't see why it needs to be unreadable; just overlap the voices
vertically.  Using the example given, removing barlines and adding
a bit on the end:

 A2 E2 G2 A2 [&[& A B c d e f g  a  &\
  A A A A A A A  A  &\
  A G F E D C B, A, ]& D2 E2 A2 ...

(I'm assuming each & needs a separate matching explicitly stated
start point - it also allows for a bit more generality as they
needn't coincide).

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Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[Jack Campin]

>> Let's see; if I read this correctly, then in the line:
>>
>>   ...|!dead!trill!beef|...
>>
>> the !dead! would be the decoration,  and  the  staff  break
>> would come in the middle of the bar.  Right?
>
> Good point, but generally people who are using one "system" (who
> belong to the abc2win sect for ex., or in the opposite to the
> abcm2ps sect) won't use the other one. 

It might be useful to some to have the functionality provided by
both.

By far the best way to do that would be for abcm2ps to change the
character(s) it uses round those !! things to something else,
like + or * (both of which are both legacy syntax and rarely used
back when they were supported).


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Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[Jack Campin]

> This is what the new standard-in-development has to say about it:
> line breaking
> To force a line break at all times, a star (*) can be used.

Who wrote that, why and after what discussion?  (That is not
what the abc2mtex * means).

For me it would be a pain in the arse.

If you want to use * for anything, use it for the bracketed
things (which I won't write anyway so I don't care how ugly
they are).


> Deprecated line breaking

> The abc2win program used a `!' character to force line
> breaks, as is currently supported with the * operator
> (see section Line breaking).

Deprecate !! instead.


> Users should avoid using ! line breaks together with
> !...! symbols.

Easy enough, I have no intention of ever using those symbols.

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Re: [abcusers] Chord length

[Jack Campin]

> But uses like [A4ce]2 would seem to be fairly clear to understand,
> convenient to type, and consistent with the rest of the language;
> it's a thing I'd try if I needed to express such a thing.

Mixed lengths in the same chord are *not* clear to understand if you
are trying to implement a player or barlength checker, or even a staff
notation generator where absolute duration influences horizontal space
allocation.

Some other time, PLEASE.

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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[Tom Keays]

We currently have this notation for voice overlay (although this is first
I'd ever heard of it).

A2 E2 G2 A2|A B c d e f g a & A A A A A A A A & A G F E D C B, A,|]

John Chambers explained was functionally equivalent to doing this.

[V:1] A2 E2 G2 A2 | A B c d e f g  a |]
[V:2] | A A A A A A A  A |]
[V:3] | A G F E D C B, A,|]

He went on, in a later email, to suggest that, because they are actually
transient voices that, rather than have to continue to notate the two mostly
empty voices throughout a piece that an an alternate notation could be used
and he suggested.

[V:1] | A2 E2 G2 A2 | A B c d e f g  a | g2 f2 e2 a2 |]
[V:1+]| | A A A A A A A  A |
[V:1+]| | A G F E D C B, A,|

In a parallel track, Richard Robinson proposed this variant of the first to
improve readability, where presumably the second voices were also to be
considered transient for that bar.

A2 E2 G2 A2 |[v:1] A B c d e f g a [v:2] A A A A A A A A [v:3] A G F E D C
B, A,|]


OK.  I liked John's idea of transient voices as he expressed them: [V:1+].
While using separate lines for each transient voice certainly improves
readability, it is much harder to write.  I really like the compactness of
the original.

So, how about combining the two ideas?

A2 E2 G2 A2 |[V:1] A B c d e f g a [V:1+] A A A A A A A A [V:1+] A G F E D C
B, A,|]

Or use Richard's lower case idea [v:1+].


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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[Anselm Lingnau]

John Walsh  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I concluded that if I
> were to use this any more, I'd need a pre-processor of some sort... So if
> we want to preserve human-readability and use the & in any complicated
> way, it might be worthwhile discussing alternatives.

My little project is ABCifying the tunes from the RSCDS dance books.
Some of the tunes have a second voice every so often (say, in four
bars out of twenty-four), and the »&« feature saves me a lot of typing
in [V:2] bits that are mostly empty.

Anselm
-- 
Anselm Lingnau .. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I don't know a lot about this artificial life stuff -- but I'm suspicious of
anything Newsweek gets goofy about -- and I suspect its primary use is as
another money extraction tool to be applied by AI labs to the Department of
Defense (and more power to 'em).   -- Aaron Watters
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Re: Subject: Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[John Walsh]

Wow!  Go away for two hours and I'm 20 emails behind and the
subject I was thinking about has changed. (Probably a good thing, keeps me
from sending some better-not-sent posts.)  Are all of you folks sitting
anxiously by your computers with your email opened???

But could I ask people to be sparing with the material quoted?  
That usually isn't a problem, but with the present volume, it takes quite
a bit of time to go thru quoted and re-quoted material, and anything which
would pare down that task would be appreciated.  Apologies for taking your
time on this.

On the subject of bangs and stars for linebreaks and
decorations...I haven't been following it closely, and now I admit to
being a bit puzzled as to the status of what's being decided. It
seems to me that using ! for both a hard linebreak and for ! ... ! in the
same tune is asking for trouble.  Using spaces to help distinguish them
(did I see that suggested?) will lead to really frustrated users who can't
understand why abc refuses to behave as they expect---and who, after they
find out that it's just a missing or extra [EMAIL PROTECTED]& space (dialect of cartoon
language there, not abc) will re-invent Phil's unix post on the spot.

The other thing that makes this question a bit hard to decide is
that the linbreak usage is pretty much limited to abc2win, while the other
usage is so recent that not too many people even know about it yet.  I
personally like ! ... ! as is, because my intuition is that the ! ... !
usage will be considerably more important in the long run, but of course,
that remains to be seen.

What about deciding what we actually want---whatever will make the
best abc---as opposed to what we think we are forced to accept? There
could be an abc2win compatibility mode---where ! is always a hard
linebreak---and some well-placed warnings to the effect that "There is an
ambiguous use of !.  You may want to try abc2win compatibility mode."

And maybe, just maybe, if someone convinces Chris to downplay
abc2win on his site, the problem will get less acute with time.

(Or Jum Vint will update abc2win.  But that is really too much to ask.  I
am reminded of a sig I saw somewhere: "Programming is like sex: make one
mistake and you end up supporting it for life.")

Cheers,
John Walsh
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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, [iso-8859-1] Forgeot Eric wrote:

> would " A B c d e f g a & x6 A2 " allowed then ?
This is notated correctly.


> so my question is will the notation with for ex. " A
> B c d e f [A2g] a " still be possible, in addition to
> the & possibility (this [A2g] was implemented in
> abcm2ps

Abcm2ps does not support it. In abcm2ps [A2g] is
equivalent with [A2g2] .

Please explain to me: would there be any difference
between [A2g] and [gA2] ?



 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[Forgeot Eric]

>>The & operator may be used to temporarily overlay
>>several voices within one measure. The & operator

I can understand this when it comes to (temporary) voices, with
several melodies. But sometimes it concerns only chords, for ex. a
chord with two wholes and one with a half, it seems less logic to
use this kind of notation (would " A B c d e f g a & x6 A2 "
allowed then ?), so my question is will the notation with for ex.
" A B c d e f [A2g] a " still be possible, in addition to the &
possibility (this [A2g] was implemented in abcm2ps, andI think
Abacus can handle this too) ? 
It seems so obvious and logical it's strange it wasn't from the
beginning of Abc, and for chords it's more readable than this &
command (again this example of "A B c d e f [A2g] a", we can see
at once what note is with the other)

About pure voice overlay, I think also the option by Richard is
even better than &, I find it more readable
>[v:1] A B c d e f g a [v:2] A A A A A A A A [v:3] A G F E D C B, A,|]

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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, John Fattaruso wrote:

> OK, but what I was trying to get a reaction to initially was allowing
> whatever syntax triggers overlays of notes to similarly trigger an overlay
> in the corresponding lyrics in the w: line.

There are 2 kludges you can use. Use multiple w: lines;
or precede the notes with "^..." or "_..." annotations
that contain the lyrics.



 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

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[abcusers] Re: Chord length - waaaah!

[Bryancreer]

Nobody is opposing the [abc]2 idea are they?  Can we take that as agreed and get onto the far more important business of different note lengths in one chord?

Irwin Oppenheim wrote -

>All the notes within a chord should have the same
>length. More complicated chords can be transcribed with
>the & operator, see section Voice overlay.

This was discussed about a year ago and it was generally accepted that you could have notes of different lengths in the same chord.  The issue, as John Chambers has mentioned, was which note represented the time elapsed before the following note - highest, lowest, longest, shortest...  I opted for first listed on the grounds that it was independant of the musical content.  Some agreed but others did not and (as usual) the dicussion reached no firm conclusion.  I went ahead and implemented it in Abacus on this basis.

For instance with L:1/4, [GD2] A B c would take four beats and [D2G] A B c would take five.

I do put notes of two different length on different stems.  I hate to think what would happen with notes of three different lengths.

I'm quite happy to implement the & (or whatever) notation as well but do not want to see what I've already done outlawed.
 
John Chambers wrote -

>Similarly, the [ce]>[Bd] case is very useful,  and  already
>works with some abc software.

It works with Abacus.

Bryan Creer

Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Frank Nordberg wrote:

> Well, it seems to me that the *main* problem is simlpy that the 2.0
> draft doesn't explain it clearly enough (I can assure you all that
> Bernard wasn't the only one confused about it!).

I'll add a picture when I'll have some time.


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

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Subject: Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[Forgeot Eric]

I said it could be adviced to use it with care.
If someone is using this kind of notation   
...|!dead!trill!beef|... then one has made a mistake because it
could be misunderstood. It's also the reason why I think in the
2.0 standard * should be used for forced line break instead.
And why a mistake ? because if one would have written  ...|! dead
!trill!beef |... then some parsers may have avoid the error. And
if one had thought to another way of putting this trill, either
with U: or ~ or with a new line 
...|
dead !trill!beef|... etc.

It's like the question of using a %%version 2.0 in tunes, the
general answer is "ppl will never enter this number if they don't
feel the use to it", it's the same with all other information,
some pple will never enter X: fields, some may input unreadable
abc... well if people are not parcimonious, it's their problem...
Including the version used would be a good idea for those who
would need it.

>Now that ! staffbreak is available in abcm2ps, it's a reasonable
/.../
>!decorations!. In which case the 2 different ! constructions will
be
>mixed together in the same line wherever they have to be.

>> I thought with the new standard the ! as line break was
supposed
>> to be still supported for backward compatibility, and only
>> tolerated, with advice to avoid to use both, or to use with care.

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Re: [abcusers] Re: About the choice of '!'

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> It would be more accurate to say that !...! conflicts
> with the abc2win usage and is far less widely used.

Both "!...!" and "!" are established notation, and
therefore the standard encourages parsers to handle
both, and even provides an algorithm to do so.

> It seems pointless to waste another character to do
> the same job.

I do not think so. Using ! and !..! in one and the same
tune may lead to disaster if you make a small typo. So,
while "!" should definitely be supported, I encourage
you to support "*" as well.


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[Frank Nordberg]

Richard Robinson wrote:

It occurs to me that part of the problem here is that the '&' just
doesn't stand out visually against the notes.
Well, it seems to me that the *main* problem is simlpy that the 2.0 
draft doesn't explain it clearly enough (I can assure you all that 
Bernard wasn't the only one confused about it!).

But yes, the lowercase "v:" seems clearer than the "&"
I stil prefer John's V:1+ idea, though. Among other things it allows a 
clear definition of *which* main voice the secondary voice is connected to.
It may get a bit confusing when we have a v:2 as a secondary part to V:1 
and a V:2 as an independent voice at the same time.

Howeever, I understand the & notation already is implemented by at least 
one application, That is definitely something that should be taken into 
consideration.

---

John Chambers wrote:
...
> (For some reason, this example  reminds  me  of  the  piano
> piece  by  Mozart, which ended with widely separated chords
> for the left and right hands, plus one note in  the  middle
> to be played with your nose.)
Actually a German (I think) 20th Century composer whose name looses me 
at the moment also wrote a piano piece along the same line: two widely 
separated chords and a fast repeated drone note in the middle. Only - 
well the body part *he* specified for the middle note was not the nose...

Frank Nordberg
http://www.musicaviva.com
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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[John Fattaruso]

John Chambers wrote:
One thought: At least with keyboard music, what you have is
a  "transient  voice"  that  isn't  a  true voice, but just
appears for a brief time and then  fades  away.   Maybe  we
could use a single voice, and flag the transient voice with
something like a '+' to mean "Add this to the voice".   The
recent example then might look like:
[V:1] | A2 E2 G2 A2 | A B c d e f g  a | g2 f2 e2 a2 |]
[V:1+]| | A A A A A A A  A |
[V:1+]| | A G F E D C B, A,|
The [V:1+] notation  would  mean  to  add  these  into  the
previous  staff as part of V:1.  You could use | as much as
needed to get the bars aligned correctly, as is done in  w:
lines to skip to the next bar.
Would this solve the problem?  It would take a bit of  work
to implement, but probably no more than the '&' approach. I
think it could be made a lot more readable,  too,  as  this
simple  example  shows.  In most cases, I suppose you would
only need one such extra line, to add in the notes that are
difficult to put in the [V:1] line.
OK, but what I was trying to get a reaction to initially was allowing 
whatever syntax triggers overlays of notes to similarly trigger an overlay 
in the corresponding lyrics in the w: line. I am currently up against this 
limitation in abcm2ps trying to typeset a choral piece where there are the 
four SATB parts through the entire piece, but only in the last three or 
four measures the bass part splits into bass I and bass II, with slightly 
different rhythms for the lyrics.

John F.

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[abcusers] Re: About the choice of '!'

[Bryancreer]

Irwin Oppenheim wrote -  

>line breaking
>
>To force a line break at all times, a star (*) can be
>used. The star can be inserted everywhere, where a note
>group could.
>
>Deprecated line breaking
>
>The abc2win program used a `!' character to force line
>breaks, as is currently supported with the * operator
>(see section Line breaking).

If there is a recognised need for a line break character, then, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, ! is well established in that role.  It seems pointless to waste another character to do the same job.

>The abc2win usage obviously conflicts with the !...!
>style notation for musical symbols

It would be more accurate to say that !...! conflicts with the abc2win usage and is far less widely used. (I've never come across an example in nature.)  Why not use ** for musical symbols?

Bryan Creer

[abcusers] RE : Help - getting ABC files on BarFly

[Forgeot Eric]

Do you use HFVExplorer ?
I think it can convert automatically files between mac and pc. I
had no problem for opening my abc files with BarFly then

http://www.nic.fi/~lpesonen/HFVExplorer/


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Re: [abcusers] Chord length

[Frank Nordberg]

Bernard Hill wrote:

But what does it MEAN in notation terms? You are not allowed to have
different length notes on the same stem in standard notation,
...

Well, "allowed" may not be the right word here. The question is if it's 
possible in standard notation. You do occasionally see dotted and 
non-dotted notes on the same stem, and a qarter note and a half note 
head together as well.
Actually, it's easier to implement in standard notation than in abc 
since the rules are much more relaxed.

But I agree with Zouki: Just let that question lie for now. Seems it 
only derails the discussion.

---

Is there any problems with notation like [BAD]4 ?

If not, I think it should be included in abc 2.0. It's much easier for a 
human both to read and write than [B4A4D4] - which should be kept just 
for the sake of backwards compatibility.



Frank Nordberg
http://www.musicaviva.com
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Re: [abcusers] Chord length

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, John Chambers
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>Bernard Hill writes:
>| In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Richard Robinson
>| >Like you, I don't have very strong opinions here, it's not a thing
>| >I've found a huge need for. But uses like [A4ce]2 would seem to be
>| >fairly clear to understand, convenient to type, and consistent
>| >with the rest of the language; it's a thing I'd try if I needed to
>| >express such a thing.
>|
>| But what does it MEAN in notation terms? You are not allowed to have
>| different length notes on the same stem in standard notation, so the
>| [A4bc] would itself have to mean A4 at stem down and [bc] at stems up.
>| Is this what's intended?
>|
>| You only have stems up and down if you have 2 parts on the 1 stave, and
>| this does not fit in with abc anyway in terms of [] notation.
>
>You obviously haven't seen enough music notation. ;-)
>
>It's not at all unusual in some sorts of music to have both
>a  solid  and an open note head on the same stem.  Standard
>staff notation is obviously very limited  in  what  can  be
>done  with this, but combining a quarter and a half note on
>a single stem is easy, and isn't at all unusual.

Yes it is. I've only ever seen it on string parts, eg beginning of final
movement of Beethoven 5th. My reference books are quite explicit: two
notes of different lengths cannot share a stem. If you must have them
sounding at the same time then one has stem up, one down.


>
>With L:1/8, the notation [A4ce]2 is a case that works.  The
>resulting A8 is a whole note, so it doesn't have a stem. So
>the [c2e2] would be two quarter notes on the same stem, and
>the  A8 would be a stemless whole note drawn directly below
>them.  The simpler [A2c]2 would be  a  half-note  A  and  a
>quarter-note c on a single stem. These aren't at all odd or
>unusual notation.
>
>Of course, it's very easy to come up with examples  in  abc
>that  have  no representation in staff notation.  You can't
>mix quarter and eighth notes on the same stem.
>
>But in any case, this is a secondary issue. The simple case
>of  [Ace]3  is easy, and some people would like it to work.

I  would agree with that. But I would also expect abc to make [A3ce]
into the same thing, ie only need the length on the first note of the
chord for the reason I gave above.

>Similarly, the [ce]>[Bd] case is very useful,  and  already
>works with some abc software.
>
>In fact, are there abc programs that reject [ce]>[Bd] now?

Possibly. I don't :-)



Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[John Chambers]

Richard Robinson writes:
| On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 09:35:52AM -0700, John Walsh wrote:
| > > ...  It's an absolute nightmare!
| >
| > This pretty well matches my experience.  I concluded that if I
| > were to use this any more, I'd need a pre-processor of some sort... So if
| > we want to preserve human-readability and use the & in any complicated
| > way, it might be worthwhile discussing alternatives.
|
| Yes. I'm not sure what would be a more readable way ?

One thought: At least with keyboard music, what you have is
a  "transient  voice"  that  isn't  a  true voice, but just
appears for a brief time and then  fades  away.   Maybe  we
could use a single voice, and flag the transient voice with
something like a '+' to mean "Add this to the voice".   The
recent example then might look like:

[V:1] | A2 E2 G2 A2 | A B c d e f g  a | g2 f2 e2 a2 |]
[V:1+]| | A A A A A A A  A |
[V:1+]| | A G F E D C B, A,|

The [V:1+] notation  would  mean  to  add  these  into  the
previous  staff as part of V:1.  You could use | as much as
needed to get the bars aligned correctly, as is done in  w:
lines to skip to the next bar.

Would this solve the problem?  It would take a bit of  work
to implement, but probably no more than the '&' approach. I
think it could be made a lot more readable,  too,  as  this
simple  example  shows.  In most cases, I suppose you would
only need one such extra line, to add in the notes that are
difficult to put in the [V:1] line.


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Re: [abcusers] Re: %%ABC 2.0 identifier

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> If you read carefully what I wrote, you will
> understand that the point I was trying to get over
> was that the principle of a standard is to unify abc
> regardless of its origin.  I don't want to have to
> use a different set of parsing rules depending on the
> origin of the file.

On the contrary, the upcomming standard will recommend
parsers to read ABC as liberal as possible, so that one
parser can parse as much ABC as is reasonably possible.

On the other hand, the standard urges programs that
_write_ ABC to do that as strictly as possible, with as
much information as possible.

> Then why are you saying what applications MUST do?
I agree the wording was too strong.


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [abcusers] Chord length - waaaah!

[John Chambers]

I. Oppenheim writes:
| On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
|
| > << Thus [Ace]4  could  be
| > > used  for  [A4c4e4].   >>
|
| > Heavy ABC User* cries plaintively:
| > Could we at least get this one in and worry about the "chords containing
| > different note lengths" (can't recall when I've run across this) at some
| > other time?
|
| I've added the following to the upcomming revision of
| the draft standard. Please let me know if it is
| acceptable.
|
| <<
| All the notes within a chord should have the same
| length. More complicated chords can be transcribed with
| the & operator, see section Voice overlay.
|
| The chord forms a syntactic grouping, to which the same
| prefixes and postfixes can be attached as to an
| ordinary note, except for accidentals. In particular,
| the following notation is legal:
|
| ( "^I".[CEG]- > [CEG] "^IV" [F=AC]3/2"^V"[GBD]/  H[CEG]2 )
|
| When both inside and outside the chord length modifiers
| are used, they should be multiplied. I.e. [C2E2G2]3 has
| the same meaning as [CEG]6.
| >>


Very good.  It might be better to not totally outlaw  notes
of  different  lengths,  but  rather to say that it isn't a
good idea  because  most  cases  can't  be  represented  in
standard  staff  notation.   There are a few valid uses for
such things.

Something you see in a lot of guitar music is a chord  with
one or two white note heads, very often with a dangling tie
that leads to no matching note.  This  has  a  well-defined
meaning  to  a guitar player.  I wonder if there's a way to
get this "let it ring" notation in abc?

When I first learned abc, there weren't  many  examples  of
the  [...]  chord  notation,  and the docs were sketchy.  I
determined by  experimenting  that  abc2ps  only  used  the
length of the first note, so I figured that was how abc did
it, and I wrote all such chords with just the first length,
as  in  [G2B][A2c] [B3d][Ac].  Then, some time later, I ran
across the comment that different-length notes were in fact
meaningful,  and  you  really  should put a length on every
note.  So I started doing that, although it didn't make any
difference in the output that I saw.

I've since gone back a fixed some of my  older  tunes  that
use  chords,  but I can guarantee that I haven't found them
all.  And I've noticed abc from other people that does  the
same  thing.   So we do have at least a small amount of abc
around that does things this way.

Maybe I'll try to find the rest and fix them, too.

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Re: [abcusers] Chord length - waaaah!

[Richard Robinson]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 06:48:53PM +0200, I. Oppenheim wrote:
> 
> The chord forms a syntactic grouping, to which the same
> prefixes and postfixes can be attached as to an
> ordinary note, except for accidentals. In particular,
> the following notation is legal:
> 
> ( "^I".[CEG]- > [CEG] "^IV" [F=AC]3/2"^V"[GBD]/  H[CEG]2 )

I particularly like the way this clarifies the relationship between the
chord and all the other markings that can accumulate around it.

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem
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[abcusers] Re: %%ABC 2.0 identifier

[Bryancreer]

Irwin Oppenheim wrote -

>On Wed, 23 Jul 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>> Must?  What are you going to do if they don't?
>
>Please read carefully what I wrote. Then you will
>understand, that:
>
>1/ Users are not required to manually add any of these
>new fields to their ABC files at all.
>
>2/ Programs that import ABC files should not assume
>that any of these files are present.
>
>3/ The only requirement that I made is that programs
>that _export_ ABC notation, should add three fields to
>their output, that make it possible to identify later
>on which program generated the output, according to
>which version of ABC. That's all.

I have looked through the email I was quoting from and can find nothing corresponding to points 1/ and 2/.  In 3/ you have modified "must" to "should"; an improvement.

If you read carefully what I wrote, you will understand that the point I was trying to get over was that the principle of a standard is to unify abc regardless of its origin.  I don't want to have to use a different set of parsing rules
depending on the origin of the 
file.  That is no improvement on the situation we have now.

>> It is up to the developer to make it clear what
>> subset of the standard they do implement then the
>> user can make their choice and pester for the things
>> they want.
>
>Nobody disagrees on that.

Then why are you saying what applications MUST do?

A a further point, you are defining %% commands as mandatory parts of the standard whereas their current usage is application dependant in such a way that they can be safely ignored by other applications.  They are thus, by definition, not part of the standard.

Bryan Creer

Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[Richard Robinson]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 05:04:14PM +, John Chambers wrote:
> Bernard Hill writes:
> | In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, I. Oppenheim
> | >The & operator may be used to temporarily overlay
> | >several voices within one measure. The & operator
> | >separates these voices from each other. Example:
> | >
> | >A2 E2 G2 A2|A B c d e f g a & A A A A A A A A & A G F E
> | >D C B, A,|]
> | >
> | >
> |
> | So what does that mean?
> 
> You first have to undo the line wrapping.  ;-) Then you get
> something that is equivalent to:
> 
> [V:1] A2 E2 G2 A2 | A B c d e f g  a |]
> [V:2] | A A A A A A A  A |]
> [V:3] | A G F E D C B, A,|]
> 
> This should all be on one staff, of course.  With only  two
> bars, it's not very motivating.  But if you only have a few
> bars like this in a larger piece of music, it can save  you
> a lot of typing and futzing with two voices that are mostly
> silent.


It occurs to me that part of the problem here is that the '&' just
doesn't stand out visually against the notes. I wonder if it would be
possible to re-use the existing V: notation - lowercase v: doesn't seem
to be in use (oh dear, cue "we're running out of letters")


A2 E2 G2 A2 | [v:1] A B c d e f g a [v:2] A A A A A A A A [v:3] A G F E
D C B, A,|]

Is that any more readable ? I think so, but I'm not sure.

In fact, the numbers aren't necessary, it's just substituting a
different marker (though the colon would be, to distinguish it from an
up-bow, and I bet someone else'll suggest the numbers if I don't ...)


> (For some reason, this example  reminds  me  of  the  piano
> piece  by  Mozart, which ended with widely separated chords
> for the left and right hands, plus one note in  the  middle
> to be played with your nose.)

grin.


-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem
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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[John Chambers]

Bernard Hill writes:
| In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, I. Oppenheim
| >The & operator may be used to temporarily overlay
| >several voices within one measure. The & operator
| >separates these voices from each other. Example:
| >
| >A2 E2 G2 A2|A B c d e f g a & A A A A A A A A & A G F E
| >D C B, A,|]
| >
| >
|
| So what does that mean?

You first have to undo the line wrapping.  ;-) Then you get
something that is equivalent to:

[V:1] A2 E2 G2 A2 | A B c d e f g  a |]
[V:2] | A A A A A A A  A |]
[V:3] | A G F E D C B, A,|]

This should all be on one staff, of course.  With only  two
bars, it's not very motivating.  But if you only have a few
bars like this in a larger piece of music, it can save  you
a lot of typing and futzing with two voices that are mostly
silent.

(For some reason, this example  reminds  me  of  the  piano
piece  by  Mozart, which ended with widely separated chords
for the left and right hands, plus one note in  the  middle
to be played with your nose.)

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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[Richard Robinson]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 09:35:52AM -0700, John Walsh wrote:
> Phil Taylor wrote:
>   (of the & operator)
> > 
> > My take on it is that the & operator sets the time point
> > of the music back to the previous bar line, and the notes
> > which follow it form a temporary voice in parallel with
> > the preceding one.  I suspect that this should only be used
> > to add one complete bar's worth of music for each &.
> > 
> 
>   With this limitation, it seems reasonable.  It's in abc2mtex,
> without that limitation, for writing multiple-staff music.  I used it
> exactly once, on something quite simple, and the abc quickly became
> unreadable, and, worse, nearly un-editable.  But...it *did* do what I
> wanted.

Same here ... twice, I think. It was good to be able to do it, if you
really needed to, but it certainly made me think hard about whether I
really did need to. Mostly I preferred to sacrifice midi-playability
and use P:

> > It seems like a good idea to me provided that we don't get
> > carried away.  In MusicXML there is a similar construct,
> > with the addition that you can switch staves as you set the
> > time point back, and the Dolet plugins for Finale and
> > Sibelius use this extensively for e.g. Piano music.  Every
> > bar contains all of the parts, right and left hand, bass
> > and treble clef.  It's an absolute nightmare!
> > 
> 
>   This pretty well matches my experience.  I concluded that if I
> were to use this any more, I'd need a pre-processor of some sort... So if
> we want to preserve human-readability and use the & in any complicated
> way, it might be worthwhile discussing alternatives.

Yes. I'm not sure what would be a more readable way ?


-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem
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Re: [abcusers] Chord length

[John Chambers]

Bernard Hill writes:
| In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Richard Robinson
| >Like you, I don't have very strong opinions here, it's not a thing
| >I've found a huge need for. But uses like [A4ce]2 would seem to be
| >fairly clear to understand, convenient to type, and consistent
| >with the rest of the language; it's a thing I'd try if I needed to
| >express such a thing.
|
| But what does it MEAN in notation terms? You are not allowed to have
| different length notes on the same stem in standard notation, so the
| [A4bc] would itself have to mean A4 at stem down and [bc] at stems up.
| Is this what's intended?
|
| You only have stems up and down if you have 2 parts on the 1 stave, and
| this does not fit in with abc anyway in terms of [] notation.

You obviously haven't seen enough music notation. ;-)

It's not at all unusual in some sorts of music to have both
a  solid  and an open note head on the same stem.  Standard
staff notation is obviously very limited  in  what  can  be
done  with this, but combining a quarter and a half note on
a single stem is easy, and isn't at all unusual.

With L:1/8, the notation [A4ce]2 is a case that works.  The
resulting A8 is a whole note, so it doesn't have a stem. So
the [c2e2] would be two quarter notes on the same stem, and
the  A8 would be a stemless whole note drawn directly below
them.  The simpler [A2c]2 would be  a  half-note  A  and  a
quarter-note c on a single stem. These aren't at all odd or
unusual notation.

Of course, it's very easy to come up with examples  in  abc
that  have  no representation in staff notation.  You can't
mix quarter and eighth notes on the same stem.

But in any case, this is a secondary issue. The simple case
of  [Ace]3  is easy, and some people would like it to work.
Similarly, the [ce]>[Bd] case is very useful,  and  already
works with some abc software.

In fact, are there abc programs that reject [ce]>[Bd] now?

[Sounds of massive typing of one-line test cases ...]
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Re: [abcusers] Chord length - waaaah!

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> << Thus [Ace]4  could  be
> > used  for  [A4c4e4].   >>

> Heavy ABC User* cries plaintively:
> Could we at least get this one in and worry about the "chords containing
> different note lengths" (can't recall when I've run across this) at some
> other time?

I've added the following to the upcomming revision of
the draft standard. Please let me know if it is
acceptable.

<<
All the notes within a chord should have the same
length. More complicated chords can be transcribed with
the & operator, see section Voice overlay.

The chord forms a syntactic grouping, to which the same
prefixes and postfixes can be attached as to an
ordinary note, except for accidentals. In particular,
the following notation is legal:

( "^I".[CEG]- > [CEG] "^IV" [F=AC]3/2"^V"[GBD]/  H[CEG]2 )

When both inside and outside the chord length modifiers
are used, they should be multiplied. I.e. [C2E2G2]3 has
the same meaning as [CEG]6.
>>


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Phil Taylor wrote:

> My take on it is that the & operator sets the time
> point of the music back to the previous bar line, and
> the notes which follow it form a temporary voice in
> parallel with the preceding one.  I suspect that this
> should only be used to add one complete bar's worth
> of music for each &.

That is correct!


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[John Walsh]

Phil Taylor wrote:
(of the & operator)
> 
> My take on it is that the & operator sets the time point
> of the music back to the previous bar line, and the notes
> which follow it form a temporary voice in parallel with
> the preceding one.  I suspect that this should only be used
> to add one complete bar's worth of music for each &.
> 

With this limitation, it seems reasonable.  It's in abc2mtex,
without that limitation, for writing multiple-staff music.  I used it
exactly once, on something quite simple, and the abc quickly became
unreadable, and, worse, nearly un-editable.  But...it *did* do what I
wanted.

> It seems like a good idea to me provided that we don't get
> carried away.  In MusicXML there is a similar construct,
> with the addition that you can switch staves as you set the
> time point back, and the Dolet plugins for Finale and
> Sibelius use this extensively for e.g. Piano music.  Every
> bar contains all of the parts, right and left hand, bass
> and treble clef.  It's an absolute nightmare!
> 

This pretty well matches my experience.  I concluded that if I
were to use this any more, I'd need a pre-processor of some sort... So if
we want to preserve human-readability and use the & in any complicated
way, it might be worthwhile discussing alternatives.

Cheers,
John Walsh 


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Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[Richard Robinson]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 04:51:04PM +0100, Phil Taylor wrote:
> Richard Robinson wrote:
> 
> >Now that ! staffbreak is available in abcm2ps, it's a reasonable
> >assumption that I'll start using it, because it'll do good things to
> >the legibility of my source, and because I can hope that most people
> >will have access to programs that'll deal with it. I'm still wary of the
> >!decorations!, because I'm not sure how "portable" they are. But, at the
> >moment I have "tr", "D.C.", etc, in "" guitar chords, as the only
> >alternative, and that's not good either, so I may well start using
> >!decorations!. In which case the 2 different ! constructions will be
> >mixed together in the same line wherever they have to be.
> 
> One thing that we have to look out for here is that abc2win not only
> puts linebreaks where marked by a !, but also ignores all other
> linebreaks, whether or not the line is continued.  I don't know if
> this is what abcm2ps does.  BarFly can now (optionally) emulate
> abc2win in this respect.  So, I think that the rule should be that
> if you use a ! to mean a linebreak anywhere you should be careful
> to put ! at the end of every line where you want a linebreak as well.

Good point ... No, abcm2ps accepts a mixture of the 2. So if I make sure
to write all linebreaks as !, Barfly can display them as intended, plus
abc2win plus abc2mps. Okay. I daresay some'll slip through, but it makes
sense. Does it "auto-detect" this, or does the user have to choose it ?
(I guess the latter ? Which would make a mixture of the 2 in different
tunes a bit annoying for your users).

But this begins to look like something I can work with ... I just
got out an update to my http://www.leeds.ac.uk/music/Info/RRTuneBk
yesterday, that may well be the last of my public abc not to use the !
staffbreak.

Will BarFly accept these mixed with !decoration!s ? I guess not, if it's a
abc2win-compatability thing. I'm sorry, you've probably said before, I begin
to get the feeling I'm not keeping up with all of this.

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem
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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[Phil Taylor]

Bernard Hill wrote:

>>Voice overlay
>>
>>The & operator may be used to temporarily overlay
>>several voices within one measure. The & operator
>>separates these voices from each other. Example:
>>
>>A2 E2 G2 A2|A B c d e f g a & A A A A A A A A & A G F E
>>D C B, A,|]
>>
>>
>
>So what does that mean?

abcm2ps is the only program which has implemented this, so
probably only Jef can give a definitive answer at the moment.
My take on it is that the & operator sets the time point
of the music back to the previous bar line, and the notes
which follow it form a temporary voice in parallel with
the preceding one.  I suspect that this should only be used
to add one complete bar's worth of music for each &.

It seems like a good idea to me provided that we don't get
carried away.  In MusicXML there is a similar construct,
with the addition that you can switch staves as you set the
time point back, and the Dolet plugins for Finale and
Sibelius use this extensively for e.g. Piano music.  Every
bar contains all of the parts, right and left hand, bass
and treble clef.  It's an absolute nightmare!

Phil Taylor


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Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Richard Robinson wrote:
> Then I'm confused. I just had a look at
> http://abcplus.sourceforge.net/abc2-draft.html

This was the first revision of the draft standard.
We're now working on the second revision of it, soon to
be released.


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[I. Oppenheim]

>> A B c d e f g a & A A A A A A A A & A G F E D C B, A,
> So what does that mean?

Please look here:
http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/abc/split.html

Irwin
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Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[Phil Taylor]

Richard Robinson wrote:

>Now that ! staffbreak is available in abcm2ps, it's a reasonable
>assumption that I'll start using it, because it'll do good things to
>the legibility of my source, and because I can hope that most people
>will have access to programs that'll deal with it. I'm still wary of the
>!decorations!, because I'm not sure how "portable" they are. But, at the
>moment I have "tr", "D.C.", etc, in "" guitar chords, as the only
>alternative, and that's not good either, so I may well start using
>!decorations!. In which case the 2 different ! constructions will be
>mixed together in the same line wherever they have to be.

One thing that we have to look out for here is that abc2win not only
puts linebreaks where marked by a !, but also ignores all other
linebreaks, whether or not the line is continued.  I don't know if
this is what abcm2ps does.  BarFly can now (optionally) emulate
abc2win in this respect.  So, I think that the rule should be that
if you use a ! to mean a linebreak anywhere you should be careful
to put ! at the end of every line where you want a linebreak as well.

Phil Taylor


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Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[Richard Robinson]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 05:00:05PM +0200, I. Oppenheim wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Richard Robinson wrote:
> 
> > In which case the 2 different ! constructions will be
> > mixed together in the same line wherever they have to
> > be.
> 
> This is what the new standard-in-development has to say
> about it:
> 
> line breaking
> 
> To force a line break at all times, a star (*) can be
> used. The star can be inserted everywhere, where a note
> group could.


Then I'm confused. I just had a look at
http://abcplus.sourceforge.net/abc2-draft.html

and a search for "line break" finds
"I cannot decide whether `!' should be included in ABC. Before it is,
it should be accepted by more applications - and users."


The only reference to "*" is as a blank syllable, in lyrics. Also, it
doesn't cause a staff break in any software I have the use of.

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem
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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, I. Oppenheim
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, John Fattaruso wrote:
>
>> As someone primarily interested in typesetting choral
>> music, I was very interested in the voice overlay
>> capability with the '&' syntax that emerged in
>> abcm2ps some time ago. I did not see any mention of
>> this capability in the new 2.0.0 standard, however.
>> Maybe I missed it?
>
>This is what the new revision of 2.0 will say about it:
>
>Voice overlay
>
>The & operator may be used to temporarily overlay
>several voices within one measure. The & operator
>separates these voices from each other. Example:
>
>A2 E2 G2 A2|A B c d e f g a & A A A A A A A A & A G F E
>D C B, A,|]
>
>

So what does that mean?

Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] Chord length

[Bernard Hill]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Richard Robinson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 01:53:00AM +, John Chambers wrote:
>> 
>> We've had the suggestion a few times in the past that there
>> be  a way to give a length for bracketed chords, instead of
>> repeating the length for each note.  Thus [Ace]4  could  be
>> used  for  [A4c4e4].   In  one  discussion, we even had the
>> suggestion of multiplying lengths if they  are  present  in
>> both places, so [A4ce]2 would be [A8c2e2].
>> 
>> This is something that's obviously not logically necessary.
>> But  it  makes  sense, fits in with the overall abc syntax,
>> and would simplify typing for a lot of people. I don't have
>> a  strong  opinion on this one, though I'd certainly use it
>> if it were available.  But I've had a few messages recently
>> asking what ever became of the idea.
>
>Like you, I don't have very strong opinions here, it's not a thing
>I've found a huge need for. But uses like [A4ce]2 would seem to be
>fairly clear to understand, convenient to type, and consistent
>with the rest of the language; it's a thing I'd try if I needed to
>express such a thing.
>

But what does it MEAN in notation terms? You are not allowed to have
different length notes on the same stem in standard notation, so the
[A4bc] would itself have to mean A4 at stem down and [bc] at stems up.
Is this what's intended?

You only have stems up and down if you have 2 parts on the 1 stave, and
this does not fit in with abc anyway in terms of [] notation.

Unless I'm not versatile enough, it seems to me that a passage such as

Dotted Half A   Quarter A  <--- stems up
Half F   Half F<--- stems down

cannot be notated in abc as [] notation.



>


Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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Re: [abcusers] Chord length - waaaah!

[Zouki]

In a message dated 7/24/03 094307, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
writes:

<< Thus [Ace]4  could  be
> used  for  [A4c4e4].   >>

Heavy ABC User* cries plaintively:
Could we at least get this one in and worry about the "chords containing
different note lengths" (can't recall when I've run across this) at some
other time?

* Parse this as [Heavy ABC] [User], not [Heavy][ABC User] - I've been
Atkinsing for past month.

BB
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Re: [abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, John Fattaruso wrote:

> As someone primarily interested in typesetting choral
> music, I was very interested in the voice overlay
> capability with the '&' syntax that emerged in
> abcm2ps some time ago. I did not see any mention of
> this capability in the new 2.0.0 standard, however.
> Maybe I missed it?

This is what the new revision of 2.0 will say about it:

Voice overlay

The & operator may be used to temporarily overlay
several voices within one measure. The & operator
separates these voices from each other. Example:

A2 E2 G2 A2|A B c d e f g a & A A A A A A A A & A G F E
D C B, A,|]


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Richard Robinson wrote:

> In which case the 2 different ! constructions will be
> mixed together in the same line wherever they have to
> be.

This is what the new standard-in-development has to say
about it:

line breaking

To force a line break at all times, a star (*) can be
used. The star can be inserted everywhere, where a note
group could.

Deprecated line breaking

The abc2win program used a `!' character to force line
breaks, as is currently supported with the * operator
(see section Line breaking).

The abc2win usage obviously conflicts with the !...!
style notation for musical symbols (see section Musical
symbols). To support both abc2win legacy code, and
current ABC, the following algorithm is proposed:

When encountering a !, scan forward. If you find any of
"|[:]", a space, or the end of line, it is a line
break. Otherwise, it marks the beginning of a musical
symbol.

Users should avoid using ! line breaks together with
!...! symbols.


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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[abcusers] Version 2.0.0 voice overlay and lyrics

[John Fattaruso]

I have a question/suggestion about the new 2.0.0 standard. (Forgive me 
if this topic has been covered recently; I'm just back from a European 
choral tour, and I couldn't keep up with all the discussion over laptop 
dialup.)

As someone primarily interested in typesetting choral music, I was very 
interested in the voice overlay capability with the '&' syntax that 
emerged in abcm2ps some time ago. Many times in choral music we will 
have a vocal line splitting into two or three lines for only a few 
measures here and there, and abc shouldn't require defining a whole 
different voice for just those few measures.

I did not see any mention of this capability in the new 2.0.0 standard, 
however. Maybe I missed it?

Furthermore, it is not uncommon that when a vocal line temporarily 
splits into subvoices, that the pronounciation of lyrics in each of the 
subvoices will use slightly different rhythms. The '&' character is not 
currently defined as a separator character in a lyric specification. Is 
it possible to define the '&' for lyrics, in a manner similar to the 
note voice overlay, to generate a retrace back to the previous bar line, 
and allow multiple passes of lyrics through a bar that would be lined up 
with the multiple voice overlays? For each pass through the bar, the 
successive lines of lyrics would have to be offset vertically like what 
is done with successive verses.

John

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Re: [abcusers] Chord length

[Richard Robinson]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 01:53:00AM +, John Chambers wrote:
> 
> We've had the suggestion a few times in the past that there
> be  a way to give a length for bracketed chords, instead of
> repeating the length for each note.  Thus [Ace]4  could  be
> used  for  [A4c4e4].   In  one  discussion, we even had the
> suggestion of multiplying lengths if they  are  present  in
> both places, so [A4ce]2 would be [A8c2e2].
> 
> This is something that's obviously not logically necessary.
> But  it  makes  sense, fits in with the overall abc syntax,
> and would simplify typing for a lot of people. I don't have
> a  strong  opinion on this one, though I'd certainly use it
> if it were available.  But I've had a few messages recently
> asking what ever became of the idea.

Like you, I don't have very strong opinions here, it's not a thing
I've found a huge need for. But uses like [A4ce]2 would seem to be
fairly clear to understand, convenient to type, and consistent
with the rest of the language; it's a thing I'd try if I needed to
express such a thing.


-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem
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Re: [abcusers] Help - getting ABC files on BarFly

[Laura Conrad]

> "Richard" == Richard Robinson
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Richard> "The only intuitive user interface is the nipple".

I visited a friend who had been nursing her newborn son less than 2
days once, and that one involves some training, too.

-- 
Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ )
(617) 661-8097  fax: (801) 365-6574 
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139


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Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[Richard Robinson]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 11:51:43AM +0200, Forgeot Eric wrote:
> >Let's see; if I read this correctly, then in the line:
> >
> >   ...|!dead!trill!beef|...
> >
> >the !dead! would be the decoration,  and  the  staff  break
> >would come in the middle of the bar.  Right?
> 
> Good point, but generally people who are using one "system" (who
> belong to the abc2win sect for ex., or in the opposite to the
> abcm2ps sect) won't use the other one. 
> 
> >A couple of other people  have  given  examples  like  this
> /.../
> > But  if we include both in the standard, we can
> >assume that people and programs will soon start using both,
> 
> I thought with the new standard the ! as line break was supposed
> to be still supported for backward compatibility, and only
> tolerated, with advice to avoid to use both, or to use with care.


Now that ! staffbreak is available in abcm2ps, it's a reasonable
assumption that I'll start using it, because it'll do good things to
the legibility of my source, and because I can hope that most people
will have access to programs that'll deal with it. I'm still wary of the
!decorations!, because I'm not sure how "portable" they are. But, at the
moment I have "tr", "D.C.", etc, in "" guitar chords, as the only
alternative, and that's not good either, so I may well start using
!decorations!. In which case the 2 different ! constructions will be
mixed together in the same line wherever they have to be.


-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem
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Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[Richard Robinson]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 07:55:50AM +0200, Jean-Francois Moine wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 16:27:39 +0100, Richard Robinson 
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>   [snip]
> >AB cd ef | fe dc BA | ! !trill! AB cd ef | fe dc BA |]
> >
> >complains "Decoration not terminated" and loses the last 2 bars.
> >This seems rather counter-intuitive ?
> 
> Stopping on blank is done in the abcm2ps version 3.7.0 I'm uploading
> just now.

Ah yes, thanks.

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem
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Re: [abcusers] Help - getting ABC files on BarFly

[Richard Robinson]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 12:29:34PM +0200, I. Oppenheim wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Phil Taylor wrote:
> 
> > The classic MacOS does not use file extensions to identify files,
> > instead there are two four-character fields associated with files,
> > called the creator and file type signatures.  The old version of
> > BarFly can only open files of type "TEXT".
> 
> > ResEdit can only fix one file at a time, but there
> > are several free or shareware programs which can
> > operate on multiple files
> 
> Hmm, apparently UNIX is not the only OS that can be
> somewhat less than intuitive :-(

They all have to be learnt.

"The only intuitive user interface is the nipple".

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem
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Re: [abcusers] Chord length

[John Chambers]

Jack Campin writes:
| > We've had the suggestion a few times in the past that there
| > be  a way to give a length for bracketed chords, instead of
| > repeating the length for each note.  Thus [Ace]4  could  be
| > used  for  [A4c4e4].   In  one  discussion, we even had the
| > suggestion of multiplying lengths if they  are  present  in
| > both places, so [A4ce]2 would be [A8c2e2].
|
| I think it got lost within the discussion about having notes of
| differing lengths within chords.  [Ace]4 doesn't have anything
| like the same semantical problems as [A4ce] so it might be
| better to discuss it separately.

You're probably right.  Different note lengths like this  don't  work
too  well  in  staff  notation,  of  course.  I'd bet that most users
wouldn't ever combine lengths this way.  But I gave one example of  a
sort  that  you would see occasionally, with a held "drone" note that
would translate into a white note head.

| There shouldn't be any problem with any durational modifier being
| applied to a chord made up of same-length notes, should there?
|
| {[DGB][EAc]}(3:2:4[EGB]2[DFA]/<<{[EGB]}[EGc]/
|
| for example.

Good example. I wish that chords as grace notes generally worked.  No
reason  they  shouldn't,  of  course,  but how many programs actually
implement them?

Back to the topic at hand.  That [EGB]2 in the middle shouldn't cause
any  parsing problems, for the same reason that just E2 shouldn't.  A
group of notes on one stem (also known as a  "chord"  ;-)  should  be
syntactically very much like a single note. The general syntax of abc
puts the length after a note, and applying this to a group  of  notes
really  shouldn't be a stretch.  It would probably require a bit more
code in a parser, but it would be a nice feature for people typing or
reading abc.

Some programs already half-implement this, because [AF]>[BG] works in
at least some programs.  It's curious that this would work, while the
simpler [AF]3[BG] doesn't.  I know this is true of abc2ps, because  I
use  the  former  a  lot, and I was a bit surprised when I discovered
that the latter is an error.


Maybe we should fire up another thread about the meaning of  a  chord
with  different-length  notes.   It  would  be  handy if there were a
standard way of deciding on the length of such a chord, in the  sense
of  when the next note/chord starts.  But that really should be a new
topic, so as not to derail this one.


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Re: [abcusers] multivoice & linecontinuation

[Phil Taylor]

Jack Campin wrote:

>The line numbers are an icky hack.  There ought to be some way to
>integrate that with the P: playing order specification.

That could get quite complicated.  However, just putting the line
number before the first word of the line would work OK if the
program was smart enough to recognise it as a number and align
it with the left of the staff instead of with the first note.
There's a suggestion to that effect in the new standard and I'll
probably do it for a future version.

Phil Taylor


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Re: [abcusers] Help - getting ABC files on BarFly

[Tom Keays]

BTW, instead of

> /Developer/Tools/GetFileInfo /Users/thomaskeays/Desktop/McLennan.abc

I could have typed

> /Developer/Tools/GetFileInfo ~/Desktop/McLennan.abc

Because /Users/thomaskeays is my home directory.

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Re: [abcusers] Help - getting ABC files on BarFly

[Tom Keays]

on 7/24/03 5:25 AM, Phil Taylor wrote:
> The Carbon version of BarFly (because it has to live in a Unix
> environment) can open untyped files provided that they have a .abc
> or .txt extension, but you won't be able to run that under
> BasiliskII.

But there is hope, even in Unix.  You can set file type and creator using
Mac OS X Terminal, if you have installed Apple's Developer Tools.

Type this to find out the file's Type and Creator.

/Developer/Tools/GetFileInfo /Users/thomaskeays/Desktop/McLennan.abc

file: "/Users/thomaskeays/Desktop/McLennan.abc"
type: "TEXT"
creator: ""
attributes: avbstclinmed
created: 09/17/2001 18:56:58
modified: 09/17/2001 18:56:58

Note this file, because I downloaded it, doesn't have a creator associated
with it.  Do this

/Developer/Tools/SetFile -c Bfly -t TEXT
/Users/thomaskeays/Desktop/McLennan.abc

where Bfly is the creator designator for BarFly.

Run the previous command

/Developer/Tools/GetFileInfo /Users/thomaskeays/Desktop/McLennan.abc

file: "/Users/thomaskeays/Desktop/McLennan.abc"
type: "TEXT"
creator: "Bfly"
attributes: avbstclinmed
created: 09/17/2001 18:56:58
modified: 09/17/2001 18:56:58

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Re: [abcusers] Help - getting ABC files on BarFly

[Phil Taylor]

I.Oppenheim wrote:

>Hmm, apparently UNIX is not the only OS that can be
>somewhat less than intuitive :-(

Touché!

In practice most Mac users will never have to mess with
file signatures.  Problems will only arise when you import
files by unusual routes, e.g. when you have two different
operating systems on the same machine.

Phil Taylor


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Re: [abcusers] multivoice & linecontinuation

[Jack Campin]

>> I searched around through my collection, [...] and I had trouble
>> finding more that a handful of files with M: or K: inside the
>> music, either in the clumsy old form or bracketed.
> I was guessing so too, especially where most abc-tunes seem
> to be rather simple & short (as by nature & history of abc)

It's pretty common for even the simplest English folk-songs to vary
in metre.  I am not quite sure why this one needed to be transcribed
that way but it was.  Incidentally demonstrating a use of ` I hadn't
thought of until I started this: simultaneously aligning ABC notes
with the text while doing beaming in the modern way Bernard described
here.

X:1
T:Scarborough Fair
O:Yorkshire
C:Collected and arranged by Cecil Sharp
%%Copyright: 1916, Oliver Ditson Company
S:A Selection of Some Less Well Known Folk-Songs vol. 2
S:compiled by Cyril Winn
S:London: Novello and Company, Limited
Z:Jack Campin 2003 
M:6/8
L:1/8
Q:3/8=60 "Andante"
P:ABABABC
K:G Dorian
P:A
G`A```G   F``GA   |B>c`B A2
w:1.Where are you go-ing? To   Scar- bor-  ough  Fair?
w:3.Tell  her to  wash   it   in   yon-*   der   well,
w:5.Tell  her to  plough it   with one*ram's horn,
%
z|G2   A   (BA)G   |G``B``c   d2
w:Pars-ley, sage,* rose-ma-ry and thyme,
w:Pars-ley, sage,* rose-ma-ry and thyme,
w:Pars-ley, sage,* rose-ma-ry and thyme,
%
  G|d2 d=e``d```c   |dG```G   (FG)
w:Re-   mem-   ber   me to  abonn-y   lass there,*
w:Where water  ne'er sprung nor adrop of  rain fell,*
w:And   sow~it all   o- ver with one  pep-per  corn,*
%
  A |(Bc)```B A```A`G  |[M:3/8]D``=E`^F |[M:6/8]G2z z3||
w:For once* she   was a true   lov-er ofmine.
w:And she*  shall be  a true   lov-er ofmine.
w:And she*  shall be  a true   lov-er ofmine.
%
P:B
GA```G  F``G``A|(Bc)`BA`A
w:2.Tell her to make   me a  cam-*   bric shirt,*
w:4.Tell her to plough me an ac-  re of   land,*
w:6.Tell her to reap   it with~a sick-le of   leath-er,
%
z|G2   A   (BA)G   |G``B``c   d2
w:Pars-ley, sage,* rose-ma-ry and thyme,
w:Pars-ley, sage,* rose-ma-ry and thyme,
w:Pars-ley, sage,* rose-ma-ry and thyme,
%
  G   |d`d``d  =edc  |d2 G  F`G
w:With-out   an-y   need-le   or  thread work'd init,
w:Be-  tween*   the sea  and  the salt   seastrand,*
w:And  tie  it  all up   with a   tom-   tit's  feath-er,
%
  A |(Bc)  B A``A`G   |[M:3/8]D``=E`^F |[M:6/8]G2z z3||
w:And she* shall be a truelov-er ofmine.
w:And she* shall be a truelov-er ofmine.
w:And she* shall be a truelov-er ofmine.
%
P:C
GA```G  FG``A |B```c``B A3|
w:7.Tell her to gath-er it all in a sack,
%
  G2   A   (BA)G   |G``B``c   d2
w:Pars-ley, sage,* rose-ma-ry and thyme,
%
  G  |d```d``d =ed``c|d```G```G(FG)
w:And car-ry it home on a but-ter-fly's back,
%
  A  |Bc```B A``A`G  |[M:3/8]D``=E`^F |[M:6/8]G3-G2z||
w:And then she shall be a true   lov-er ofmine.

BarFly doesn't do too badly with that - its most serious problem is
that it doesn't put the playing order anywhere in the staff notation
display.  It would look better in landscape format, but I can't tell
BarFly to open up the staff spacing enough to stop the text colliding
with the staves (5 per page is the minimum).

The line numbers are an icky hack.  There ought to be some way to
integrate that with the P: playing order specification.

-
Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
 * 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 <--


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Re: [abcusers] Chord length

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Jack Campin wrote:

> I think it got lost within the discussion about having notes of
> differing lengths within chords.

I think that problem is now solved with the
introduction of &-style voice overlay.


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] Help - getting ABC files on BarFly

[I. Oppenheim]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Phil Taylor wrote:

> The classic MacOS does not use file extensions to identify files,
> instead there are two four-character fields associated with files,
> called the creator and file type signatures.  The old version of
> BarFly can only open files of type "TEXT".

> ResEdit can only fix one file at a time, but there
> are several free or shareware programs which can
> operate on multiple files

Hmm, apparently UNIX is not the only OS that can be
somewhat less than intuitive :-(


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] About the choice of '!'

[Forgeot Eric]

>Let's see; if I read this correctly, then in the line:
>
>   ...|!dead!trill!beef|...
>
>the !dead! would be the decoration,  and  the  staff  break
>would come in the middle of the bar.  Right?

Good point, but generally people who are using one "system" (who
belong to the abc2win sect for ex., or in the opposite to the
abcm2ps sect) won't use the other one. 

>A couple of other people  have  given  examples  like  this
/.../
> But  if we include both in the standard, we can
>assume that people and programs will soon start using both,

I thought with the new standard the ! as line break was supposed
to be still supported for backward compatibility, and only
tolerated, with advice to avoid to use both, or to use with care.
I think in the abc files I made we can find both, but not in this
kind of use :
 ...|!dead!trill!beef|...






___
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Re: Solfa (Was: [abcusers] a very peculiar use of word alignment

[Jack Campin]

[solfa]
> I'll try to locate a copy of the John Curwen reference through 
> Inter-Library Loan.  The local library does not have it, but it
> should be obtainable, now that I know exactly what to look for.

You are quite likely to find one second-hand someday.  I got an
extra copy a year or so ago (for only 50p) and passed it on to
somebody on the Scots-L list.  They can fetch silly prices on EBay
but there shouldn't be any need to use that.


> The local library does have a copy of the 20-volume version of
> New Grove Dictionary of Music; I'll check it tomorrow and see
> what it has to offer.

It gives a comparative description of textual musical notations
but doesn't have a full tutorial on any one of them.  Probably
not what you want.

-
Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
 * 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 <--


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Re: [abcusers] Chord length

[Jack Campin]

> We've had the suggestion a few times in the past that there
> be  a way to give a length for bracketed chords, instead of
> repeating the length for each note.  Thus [Ace]4  could  be
> used  for  [A4c4e4].   In  one  discussion, we even had the
> suggestion of multiplying lengths if they  are  present  in
> both places, so [A4ce]2 would be [A8c2e2].

I think it got lost within the discussion about having notes of
differing lengths within chords.  [Ace]4 doesn't have anything
like the same semantical problems as [A4ce] so it might be
better to discuss it separately.

There shouldn't be any problem with any durational modifier being
applied to a chord made up of same-length notes, should there?

{[DGB][EAc]}(3:2:4[EGB]2[DFA]/<<{[EGB]}[EGc]/

for example.

-
Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
 * 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 <--


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Re: [abcusers] Help - getting ABC files on BarFly

[Phil Taylor]

Hi Guido,

>I need your help for a problem I just can't solve myself. I need to test
>lots of ABC files on major applications, and I have no problem when it
>comes to Linux or Windows ones. I also run BarFly under the BasiliskII
>Macintosh emulator (incredible piece of software, BTW).
>
>I can't convince BarFly to open ABC files that it didn't create itself. I
>mean, I download ABC collections from the net, put them in /tmp, access
>that directory and see the ABC files as feature-less icons. I can't open
>these file with BarFly, Note Pad, anything. Moreover, copy and paste
>between Linux and the BasiliskII box doesn't work.
>
>Is there a way to load external ABC files in BarFly?

The classic MacOS does not use file extensions to identify files,
instead there are two four-character fields associated with files,
called the creator and file type signatures.  The old version of
BarFly can only open files of type "TEXT".  If you download your
files using a Macintosh browser or ftp program running under BasiliskII
it will set the file type automatically.  Otherwise you need to use
a utility program to change the file signatures.  The traditional
tool for this purpose is ResEdit, which you can download here:

http://developer.apple.com/tools/legacy.html

Start up ResEdit and cancel the file-opening dialog which it displays
at first (since you don't want to edit the file's resource fork).
Choose "Get Info" from the File menu and pick a file.  In the
resulting dialog, ignore everything but the Type and Creator
fields.  Set the Type to "TEXT" and the Creator to "Bfly"
then save.  ResEdit can only fix one file at a time, but there
are several free or shareware programs which can operate on multiple
files, of which the best known is FileTyper:

http://dazuma.freeshell.org/filetyper/

The Carbon version of BarFly (because it has to live in a Unix
environment) can open untyped files provided that they have a .abc
or .txt extension, but you won't be able to run that under
BasiliskII.

Phil Taylor


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Re: [abcusers] man

[I. Oppenheim]

On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Phil Taylor wrote:

> >Convert all man pages to html, and use you're
> >webbrowser to read them.
>
> er, how do I do that?

I forgot to answer this part. Just do:
man topic | man2html  > outfile

If you dont have it yet, get man2html from:
http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/man2html.html


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/
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Re: [abcusers] multivoice & linecontinuation

[Arent Storm]

- Original Message - 
From: "John Chambers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2003 1:22 AM
Subject: Re: [abcusers] multivoice & linecontinuation


> Arent Storm writes:
> | > Someone else wrote:
> | > > I used to use it and stopped because I always let the software
> | > > determine the line breaks for me.  But if I were still expecting to
> | > > determine my own line breaks, I might still be doing it that way.
> | >
> | > It was the original syntax, wasn't it ? It worked before the "inline
> | > field" [M:...] syntax was introduced, so there may be a lot of older
> | > tunes out there that have it.
> 
> | There *may* be,  but are there?
> | I haven't seen any...
> 
> It's hard to find. I searched around through my collection,
> including  a  lot of abc taken from assorted mailing lists,
> and I had trouble finding more that a handful of files with
> M: or K: inside the music, either in the clumsy old form or
> bracketed.
> 
> Even in classical music, such changes aren't common.   It's
> much  more  common  to just keep the same meter or key, and
> draw bar lines or accidentals as you need them. People seem
> to  dislike changing such settings unless the change is for
> a big chunk of the music.
> 
> So we're talking about what is a somewhat rare usage.   Not
> much  abc  will  have to change if we change the software's
> behavior for continuation lines in this case.
> 
> Of course, if you're one of the very few people who do this
> sort of thing a lot, you might be a bit annoyed ...

I was guessing so too, especially where most abc-tunes seem
to be rather simple & short (as by nature & history of abc)
 
Thanks for searching

Arent


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