RE: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-06 Thread Karl Dallas 
That's another old legend disposed of then! :-)

--
Karl Dallas, HoustonMedia
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Tel: +44(0)1274 823949
Mobile: 0771 980 5907
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organisation with which I may be connected, locally, nationally, or
internationally.


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jon Freeman
Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 4:30 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

From: "Karl Dallas"

> You don't have to euphemise crap as cr**. The word's derived from the
> name of the man who invented the modern WC, Thomas Crapper.

Wrong. Go to http://www.snopes.com/business/names/crapper.htm

Chambers Dictionary give [Middle English  crappe (chaffe) from Middle
Dutch
krappe, prob from krappen to tear off]

Jon

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-06 Thread Jon Freeman 
From: "Karl Dallas"

> You don't have to euphemise crap as cr**. The word's derived from the
> name of the man who invented the modern WC, Thomas Crapper.

Wrong. Go to http://www.snopes.com/business/names/crapper.htm

Chambers Dictionary give [Middle English  crappe (chaffe) from Middle Dutch
krappe, prob from krappen to tear off]

Jon

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RE: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-06 Thread Karl Dallas 
You don't have to euphemise crap as cr**. The word's derived from the
name of the man who invented the modern WC, Thomas Crapper.

--
Karl Dallas, HoustonMedia
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Tel: +44(0)1274 823949
Mobile: 0771 980 5907
Please note: This is a personal communication, representing my own
personal views, and does not necessarily represent the views of any
organisation with which I may be connected, locally, nationally, or
internationally.


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Christopher
Myers
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 5:56 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

> 
> Using my new previewer with 3 programs it seems that both abcm2ps and
> yaps understands the above (only yaps output looks like cr**) but
abc2ps
> chokes on the "U:M=!tenuto!"...
> 

I just did the same, and IMO, it's the abc2ps version that looks like
cr**.  The yaps version isn't as pretty as abcm2ps, but at least it
handles all the notation properly.

One more RFE (request for enhancement) while we're on the subject:
Since you added a download button at the bottom of the results page, why
not add "midi" button as well?  Should be pretty simple, right?

Anyway, thanks for the VERY nice tool!

-Chris

> > Atte's abc renderer (http://atte.dyndns.dk/lovsang/input.php) does a
> > very nice job with this (obviously he uses abcm2ps) whereas the one
on
> > concertina.net (http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html)
doesn't
> > look very nice.
> 
> Comparing outputs with my previewer I can almost conclude that they
use
> abc2ps...
> 
> --
> peace, love & harmony
> Atte
> To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to:
http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html

-- 
Christopher Myers, Graduate Software Developer 
Ingenta, Inc.
111R Chestnut St.
Providence, RI  02903
ph:  401.331.2014 x 102
em:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
aim: chrismyers001
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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-05 Thread John Chambers 
Chris comments:
| I've managed to get separate voices using abcm2ps (note: I'm not sure if
| this is standard abc, but abc2midi doesn't like it).  Here's what I do,
| and it comes out quite nice IMHO:
|
| X:9
| T:McLeod's Reel
| M:2/4
| L:1/16
| %%staves [1 2]
| S: Christopher Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> abcusers 2003-2-5
| U:M=!tenuto!
| K:G
| V:1
| |:BA|.G2Mg2 edeg|B2{c}BA B2BA|.G2Mg2 edeg|A2{B}AG AcBA|
| .G2Mg2 edeg|B2{c}BA B2d2|e2>f2 edef|gedB A2::
| BA|GABc dBGA|BcBA BcBA|GABc dBGB|A2{B}AG AcBA|
| GABc dBGA|BcBA B2d2|e2>f2 edef|gedB A2:|
| V:2
| |:BA|GDGB c2ce|dBGE D2BA|GDGB c2ce|dcAF D2FA|
| GDGB c2ce|dBGE D2B2|c2>A2 c2c2|B2G2 F2::
| D2|B2G2 BGD2|G2d2 B2D2|B2G2 BGD2|dcAD F2c2|
| B2G2 BGD2|G2d2 gdB2|c2>G2 c2c2|B2G2 F2:|

I fed this to my (jcabc2ps) clone of abc2ps, and it came out  looking
quite nice. I've made a bunch of extensions to what abc2ps did, but I
haven't changed the handling of voices significantly. I'd expect that
any abc2ps clone would handle it.

| I've found that the first voice determines how everything lines up in
| the output.  If you screw up in the second voice, as far as measure
| lengths or line lengths, Voice 1 is the "master", and abcm2ps tries to
| do the best it can, often with surprising ugly results.

This is correct.   Actually,  the  original  abc2ps  was  happy  with
misaligned   measures.   I've  experimented  with  voices  that  have
different measure lengths, and it did exactly what I expected. You do
have  to  be careful if the ends of staffs matter to you.  But abc2ps
isn't bothered by staff breaks in the middle of a  measure,  so  such
polyrhythms aren't much of a problem.

| Again, I dunno if my abc is standard, but it makes pretty output, which
| is my goal anyway.

It looks fine to me. The U:M=!tenuto! is somewhat newer notation that
many abc tools won't understand. I've hacked it into jcabc2ps, but it
still has many bugs, so I haven't documented it.  Maybe I should  get
serious about this, now that it's semi-standard.

(And maybe we should get together a pool  of  PS  code  for  as  many
musical  symbols as we can think of.  This might be something that we
could easily share among the abc2ps clones.)

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-05 Thread Atte André Jensen 
On Wed, 05 Feb 2003 12:55:45 -0500
Christopher Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I just did the same, and IMO, it's the abc2ps version that looks like
> cr**.  The yaps version isn't as pretty as abcm2ps, but at least it
> handles all the notation properly.

Sure, we're saying the same thing, I guess...
 
> One more RFE (request for enhancement) while we're on the subject:
> Since you added a download button at the bottom of the results page,
> why not add "midi" button as well?  Should be pretty simple, right?

Comming soon... + hopefully conversion to a couple of other handy
formats.

> Anyway, thanks for the VERY nice tool!

Thanks:-)

-- 
peace, love & harmony
Atte
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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-05 Thread Christopher Myers 
> 
> Using my new previewer with 3 programs it seems that both abcm2ps and
> yaps understands the above (only yaps output looks like cr**) but abc2ps
> chokes on the "U:M=!tenuto!"...
> 

I just did the same, and IMO, it's the abc2ps version that looks like
cr**.  The yaps version isn't as pretty as abcm2ps, but at least it
handles all the notation properly.

One more RFE (request for enhancement) while we're on the subject:
Since you added a download button at the bottom of the results page, why
not add "midi" button as well?  Should be pretty simple, right?

Anyway, thanks for the VERY nice tool!

-Chris

> > Atte's abc renderer (http://atte.dyndns.dk/lovsang/input.php) does a
> > very nice job with this (obviously he uses abcm2ps) whereas the one on
> > concertina.net (http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html) doesn't
> > look very nice.
> 
> Comparing outputs with my previewer I can almost conclude that they use
> abc2ps...
> 
> --
> peace, love & harmony
> Atte
> To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: 
>http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html

-- 
Christopher Myers, Graduate Software Developer 
Ingenta, Inc.
111R Chestnut St.
Providence, RI  02903
ph:  401.331.2014 x 102
em:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
aim: chrismyers001
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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-05 Thread Atte André Jensen 
On Tue, 4 Feb 2003 23:14:18 -0500 (EST)
Jeff Bigler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On the subject of abcm2ps, can anyone here tell me how to make it
> output two voices onto separate staves?  abc2ps does this with the
> following command:
> 
> %%staves [(1 2)]
> 
> but even after reading the source code for abcm2ps I haven't found
> anything similar.  Am I just missing this, or is there in fact no way
> to do it?

Not sure what you mean, since AFAIK "output two voices onto separate
staves" is done by default...

-- 
peace, love & harmony
Atte
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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-05 Thread Atte André Jensen 
On Wed, 05 Feb 2003 09:08:49 -0500
Christopher Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I've managed to get separate voices using abcm2ps (note: I'm not sure
> if this is standard abc, but abc2midi doesn't like it).  Here's what I
> do, and it comes out quite nice IMHO:
> 
> X:9
> T:McLeod's Reel
> M:2/4
> L:1/16
> %%staves [1 2]
> U:M=!tenuto!
> K:G
> V:1
> |:BA|.G2Mg2 edeg|B2{c}BA B2BA|.G2Mg2 edeg|A2{B}AG AcBA|
> .G2Mg2 edeg|B2{c}BA B2d2|e2>f2 edef|gedB A2::
> BA|GABc dBGA|BcBA BcBA|GABc dBGB|A2{B}AG AcBA|
> GABc dBGA|BcBA B2d2|e2>f2 edef|gedB A2:|
> V:2
> |:BA|GDGB c2ce|dBGE D2BA|GDGB c2ce|dcAF D2FA|
> GDGB c2ce|dBGE D2B2|c2>A2 c2c2|B2G2 F2::
> D2|B2G2 BGD2|G2d2 B2D2|B2G2 BGD2|dcAD F2c2|
> B2G2 BGD2|G2d2 gdB2|c2>G2 c2c2|B2G2 F2:|

Using my new previewer with 3 programs it seems that both abcm2ps and
yaps understands the above (only yaps output looks like cr**) but abc2ps
chokes on the "U:M=!tenuto!"...

> Atte's abc renderer (http://atte.dyndns.dk/lovsang/input.php) does a
> very nice job with this (obviously he uses abcm2ps) whereas the one on
> concertina.net (http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html) doesn't
> look very nice.

Comparing outputs with my previewer I can almost conclude that they use
abc2ps...

-- 
peace, love & harmony
Atte
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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-05 Thread Christopher Myers 
Christopher Myers wrote:
> 
> I've managed to get separate voices using abcm2ps (note: I'm not sure if
> this is standard abc, but abc2midi doesn't like it). 

OK, I take that back.  abc2midi handles this quite well.  What I was
remembering was that previously I had Parts labelled in the abc (to
instruct players to play AABB or ABAB or whatever), and whenever the P:
line was seen after the V: line, abc2midi got confused.


 Here's what I do,
> and it comes out quite nice IMHO:
> 
> X:9
> T:McLeod's Reel
> M:2/4
> L:1/16
> %%staves [1 2]
> U:M=!tenuto!
> K:G
> V:1
> |:BA|.G2Mg2 edeg|B2{c}BA B2BA|.G2Mg2 edeg|A2{B}AG AcBA|
> .G2Mg2 edeg|B2{c}BA B2d2|e2>f2 edef|gedB A2::
> BA|GABc dBGA|BcBA BcBA|GABc dBGB|A2{B}AG AcBA|
> GABc dBGA|BcBA B2d2|e2>f2 edef|gedB A2:|
> V:2
> |:BA|GDGB c2ce|dBGE D2BA|GDGB c2ce|dcAF D2FA|
> GDGB c2ce|dBGE D2B2|c2>A2 c2c2|B2G2 F2::
> D2|B2G2 BGD2|G2d2 B2D2|B2G2 BGD2|dcAD F2c2|
> B2G2 BGD2|G2d2 gdB2|c2>G2 c2c2|B2G2 F2:|
> 
-- 
Christopher Myers, Graduate Software Developer 
Ingenta, Inc.
111R Chestnut St.
Providence, RI  02903
ph:  401.331.2014 x 102
em:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
aim: chrismyers001
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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-05 Thread Christopher Myers 
I've managed to get separate voices using abcm2ps (note: I'm not sure if
this is standard abc, but abc2midi doesn't like it).  Here's what I do,
and it comes out quite nice IMHO:

X:9
T:McLeod's Reel
M:2/4
L:1/16
%%staves [1 2]
U:M=!tenuto!
K:G
V:1
|:BA|.G2Mg2 edeg|B2{c}BA B2BA|.G2Mg2 edeg|A2{B}AG AcBA|
.G2Mg2 edeg|B2{c}BA B2d2|e2>f2 edef|gedB A2::
BA|GABc dBGA|BcBA BcBA|GABc dBGB|A2{B}AG AcBA|
GABc dBGA|BcBA B2d2|e2>f2 edef|gedB A2:|
V:2
|:BA|GDGB c2ce|dBGE D2BA|GDGB c2ce|dcAF D2FA|
GDGB c2ce|dBGE D2B2|c2>A2 c2c2|B2G2 F2::
D2|B2G2 BGD2|G2d2 B2D2|B2G2 BGD2|dcAD F2c2|
B2G2 BGD2|G2d2 gdB2|c2>G2 c2c2|B2G2 F2:|


I've found that the first voice determines how everything lines up in
the output.  If you screw up in the second voice, as far as measure
lengths or line lengths, Voice 1 is the "master", and abcm2ps tries to
do the best it can, often with surprising ugly results.


Atte's abc renderer (http://atte.dyndns.dk/lovsang/input.php) does a
very nice job with this (obviously he uses abcm2ps) whereas the one on
concertina.net (http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html) doesn't
look very nice.

Again, I dunno if my abc is standard, but it makes pretty output, which
is my goal anyway.

-Chris


Jeff Bigler wrote:
> 
> > Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 09:20:54 -0500
> > From: Christopher Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> > I prefer abcm2ps, as it allows me more control of the output (IMHO).
> 
> On the subject of abcm2ps, can anyone here tell me how to make it output
> two voices onto separate staves?  abc2ps does this with the following
> command:
> 
> %%staves [(1 2)]
> 
> but even after reading the source code for abcm2ps I haven't found
> anything similar.  Am I just missing this, or is there in fact no way to
> do it?
> 
> Jeff
> To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: 
>http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html

-- 
Christopher Myers, Graduate Software Developer 
Ingenta, Inc.
111R Chestnut St.
Providence, RI  02903
ph:  401.331.2014 x 102
em:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
aim: chrismyers001
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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-04 Thread Jeff Bigler 
> Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 09:20:54 -0500
> From: Christopher Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> I prefer abcm2ps, as it allows me more control of the output (IMHO).

On the subject of abcm2ps, can anyone here tell me how to make it output
two voices onto separate staves?  abc2ps does this with the following
command:

%%staves [(1 2)]

but even after reading the source code for abcm2ps I haven't found
anything similar.  Am I just missing this, or is there in fact no way to
do it?

Jeff
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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-03 Thread Manuel Reiter 
> I've kept the URLs for some of them, commented out,  in  my
> search  bot's  list  of starting places.  Here's my list of
> URLs that used to return ABC  but  don't  any  more.   I've
> removed a few that have moved and been found again, but for
> most of these, they just went away.
> 
> #   http://www-users.rwth-aachen.de/Juergen.Gier/music.htm

>From the "Juergen Gier" part, I guess this could have moved to
http://jgfiddler.de, particularly, there's a page
http://jgfiddler.de/music.htm which contains a link to
http://jgfiddler.de/music/tunes.abc, a collection of 96 tunes.

Greetings,

  Manuel

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-03 Thread John Chambers 
Ray Davies wrote:
| John Chambers wrote
|
| > But then, some abc sites have disappeared.  In a few cases,
| > I do wish I'd nabbed a copy first.
|
| Do you remember the sites or the filenames? Maybe someone has them sitting
| on their harddrive.

I've kept the URLs for some of them, commented out,  in  my
search  bot's  list  of starting places.  Here's my list of
URLs that used to return ABC  but  don't  any  more.   I've
removed a few that have moved and been found again, but for
most of these, they just went away.

#   http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/joyce/
#   http://homepages.keme.com/~whistler/
#   http://sally.roke.co.uk/SIB/abc/
#   http://shiva.soltec.net/~daglenn/
#   http://www-users.rwth-aachen.de/Juergen.Gier/music.htm
#   http://www.akula.com/~blakeley/music/index.html
#   http://www.anzwers.com.au/
#   http://www.best.com/~otter/tunes/
#   http://www.continuo.freeserve.co.uk/
#   http://www.grandunionmorris.co.uk/abc.htm
#   http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~tradsoc/archive/all.abc
#   http://www.redrival.com/tenpennybit/tunes.html
#   http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~shulman/music/

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-03 Thread Ray Davies 

John Chambers wrote

> But then, some abc sites have disappeared.  In a few cases,
> I do wish I'd nabbed a copy first.

Do you remember the sites or the filenames? Maybe someone has them sitting
on their harddrive.

Ray

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-03 Thread Christopher Myers 
John,

I have a suggestion for an enhancement to your tune-finder.
(Posted to the group to possibly influence you in your decision by
getting folks on the bandwagon)

How about a textbox in which I can enter my own abc, and click a button
or link that will generate the output I want?  I just found your
ABCconversion.html page, and that's fantastic, but it doesn't help me
convert my files on my machine, which are not on a webserver, nor does
it allow me to, on-the-fly, look at renderings of my own
works-in-progress.

Also, you use abc2ps to render.  How about in the new section mentioned
above you give the user an option to use abcm2ps instead?  I prefer
abcm2ps, as it allows me more control of the output (IMHO).

>From my HTML/CGI coding experience, it sounds like it would be pretty
simple to attach the textbox value to the same cgi that processes the
files on the web -- and it would be significantly faster, since there's
no additional machine to contact -- just yours and mine.

Anyway, just some thoughts from a lazy musician/programmer who doesn't
want to write more than he has to.  :-)

-Chris


John Chambers wrote:
> 
> Richard Robinson writes:
> | On Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 08:47:18PM +, John Chambers wrote:
> | >
> | > The main problem with making such a suggestion is that most
> | > of  the  suggestions I've gotten for enhancements have been
> | > based on the assumption that I have all the abc sitting  on
> | > the disk.  ...  Anything
> | > that  requires  searching through the tune collection would
> | > take several days.  ...
> |
> | Just out of interest, how long do you guess it would take to
> | actually grab all the ABC you're indexing (and how big would it
> | be) ... do it once and it would speed searching through them up.
> 
> The search currently takes about 2.5 days.  I don't have  a
> good  estimate  of  the total size of all the files (and it
> would take me about 2.5 days to find this number ;-).
> 
> | The problem of which, apart from resources, is cacheing obsolete
> | versions ... maybe a protocol, or convention, or something, for
> | grab-an-ABC-*if*-it's-changed, would be useful ?
> 
> Actually, that's not difficult.  All web servers return the
> modification time of files, whether you ask for it or not.
> 
> I suspect that I could actually cache all  the  online  abc
> (that I've found so far). There are some interesting things
> that could be done with this.
> 
> The main reason that I haven't experimented  with  this  is
> the  feeling  that  it  would  be overly presumptuous.  The
> online abc sites are somewhat personal collections,  and  I
> think the diversity is rather a good thing. The interesting
> thing to do with it, in my  mind,  is  to  experiment  with
> accessing  the  abc web sites as they are, in whatever form
> their owners may keep  them.   And  I've  often  encouraged
> people to experiment with their site's layout. Gathering it
> all onto one machine is  the  way  that  people  have  done
> things  for decades.  But working with things on the Net as
> they are is  a  somewhat  new  thing,  and  interesting  to
> experiment with.
> 
> There's also the "personal" issue.  Many of the online  abc
> collections are clearly very personal collections.  Some of
> them (such as Jerry Holland's  site)  are  new  music  that
> really shouldn't be copied as a whole without permission.
> 
> It's true that google caches much of the  web,  and  nobody
> much complains (except for the Scientologists ;-). But they
> don't actually *do* anything with their cached pages.  It's
> just a form of backup (and only lasts for a few months).
> 
> But then, some abc sites have disappeared.  In a few cases,
> I do wish I'd nabbed a copy first.
> 
> But I think I'll keep working mainly on finding  things  to
> do  with  online  abc where it is, and let others deal with
> copying it all to their disks.  Trying to actually use  the
> Net  as  a  live, interconnected system is more interesting
> than downloading everything and working off a local disk.
> 
> To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: 
>http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html

-- 
Christopher Myers, Graduate Software Developer 
Ingenta, Inc.
111R Chestnut St.
Providence, RI  02903
ph:  401.331.2014 x 102
em:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
aim: chrismyers001
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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-03 Thread Jon Freeman 
From: "Tom Keays"

> Has anyone ever put together a HOWTO for serving abc, midi, gif, png, and
> pdf from a server?  I know of the various abc projects from sourceforge
and
> elsewhere.  I've checked out bits of it casually but haven't really
figured
> out how you get past abc2ps (ie, I see how to get from abc to postscript,
> but not beyond that).

I've never seen one but I think John Chambers allows his source to be
downloaded from his site.  I'm sure I've looked at some perl there to see
how he went about things...

If you can see how to get to ps, you can also see how to get to midi. Again
it's a single step process but you need to run something like abc2midi . To
get to the other formats, you need to pass the output from your abc2ps
program to another program, e.g. by a temorary file.  I run ghostscript for
png and pdf. I haven't bothered with gif - I can't do it with my version of
ghostscript.

For what it's worth, here's my actual getpng.php. It needs a bit of
improving but it does the job for now.

out.abc";
 exec($prog);
 }
else
 {
 $fp = fopen("out.abc", "wb");
 fwrite($fp, $abc);
 fclose($fp);
 }

// run abcm2ps and output "out.ps"
$prog = "abcm2ps.exe out.abc -w 550 -O ..\gs\gs7.04\bin\out.ps";
exec($prog);

// run ghostscript and output out.png
chdir("..\gs\gs7.04\bin");
exec("gswin32c.exe -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pngmono -sOutputFile=out.png
out.ps");

// set the headers and send the graphic to the browser
header ("Content-type: image/png");
header("Content-Disposition: filename= " . chr(34) . "getpng.png" .
chr(34));
readfile("out.png");

?>

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RE: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-03 Thread Karl Dallas 
I was in Baghdad in 1986 and met then with Munir Bashir, probably the
world's greatest oud player. With any luck I'll see him again, cos I
bought an oud in Jordan in 2001.

--
Karl Dallas, HoustonMedia
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Tel: +44(0)1274 823949
Mobile: 0771 980 5907
Please note: This is a personal communication, representing my own
personal views, and does not necessarily represent the views of any
organisation with which I may be connected, locally, nationally, or
internationally.


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Richard
Robinson
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003 9:05 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages


[rearranged somewhat]

> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Phil Taylor
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 03:07:15PM -, Karl Dallas wrote:
>
>> Are you a war correspondent these days Karl?  Doesn't seem like a
good
>> time to be covering the Iraqi music scene.
>
> No I'm a Human Shield volunteer.


That's a big gig. I hope it turns out well for all concerned.

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-02 Thread John Chambers 
Tom Keays asks:
| Has anyone ever put together a HOWTO for serving abc, midi, gif, png, and
| pdf from a server?  I know of the various abc projects from sourceforge and
| elsewhere.  I've checked out bits of it casually but haven't really figured
| out how you get past abc2ps (ie, I see how to get from abc to postscript,
| but not beyond that).

Well, you can look at my scripts in
  http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/CGI/abc/

You want the "ps2*" scripts. They all work by using gs (GhostScript),
plus  the  "pnm*" programs.  These all seem to come with most unixoid
systems these days. The ps2png script also uses wpng, which is around
in  several  archives.  In the few cases where I've needed to get the
source to these programs, I've found it via google in only one or two
tries.

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-02 Thread John Chambers 
Richard Robinson writes:
| On Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 08:47:18PM +, John Chambers wrote:
| >
| > The main problem with making such a suggestion is that most
| > of  the  suggestions I've gotten for enhancements have been
| > based on the assumption that I have all the abc sitting  on
| > the disk.  ...  Anything
| > that  requires  searching through the tune collection would
| > take several days.  ...
|
| Just out of interest, how long do you guess it would take to
| actually grab all the ABC you're indexing (and how big would it
| be) ... do it once and it would speed searching through them up.

The search currently takes about 2.5 days.  I don't have  a
good  estimate  of  the total size of all the files (and it
would take me about 2.5 days to find this number ;-).

| The problem of which, apart from resources, is cacheing obsolete
| versions ... maybe a protocol, or convention, or something, for
| grab-an-ABC-*if*-it's-changed, would be useful ?

Actually, that's not difficult.  All web servers return the
modification time of files, whether you ask for it or not.

I suspect that I could actually cache all  the  online  abc
(that I've found so far). There are some interesting things
that could be done with this.

The main reason that I haven't experimented  with  this  is
the  feeling  that  it  would  be overly presumptuous.  The
online abc sites are somewhat personal collections,  and  I
think the diversity is rather a good thing. The interesting
thing to do with it, in my  mind,  is  to  experiment  with
accessing  the  abc web sites as they are, in whatever form
their owners may keep  them.   And  I've  often  encouraged
people to experiment with their site's layout. Gathering it
all onto one machine is  the  way  that  people  have  done
things  for decades.  But working with things on the Net as
they are is  a  somewhat  new  thing,  and  interesting  to
experiment with.

There's also the "personal" issue.  Many of the online  abc
collections are clearly very personal collections.  Some of
them (such as Jerry Holland's  site)  are  new  music  that
really shouldn't be copied as a whole without permission.

It's true that google caches much of the  web,  and  nobody
much complains (except for the Scientologists ;-). But they
don't actually *do* anything with their cached pages.  It's
just a form of backup (and only lasts for a few months).

But then, some abc sites have disappeared.  In a few cases,
I do wish I'd nabbed a copy first.

But I think I'll keep working mainly on finding  things  to
do  with  online  abc where it is, and let others deal with
copying it all to their disks.  Trying to actually use  the
Net  as  a  live, interconnected system is more interesting
than downloading everything and working off a local disk.

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-02 Thread Tom Keays 
Has anyone ever put together a HOWTO for serving abc, midi, gif, png, and
pdf from a server?  I know of the various abc projects from sourceforge and
elsewhere.  I've checked out bits of it casually but haven't really figured
out how you get past abc2ps (ie, I see how to get from abc to postscript,
but not beyond that).

From: "John Chambers"
>> 2.  Have just the ABC on hand, and convert it  on  the  fly  via  CGI
>> programs.  This looks the same to a user, but is slower.  It uses CPU
>> time on the server.  But the only extra disk space is the programs.

From: "Jon Freeman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> A reason I haven't seen given for going for #2 is the flexibilty and ease of
> maintanence it offers. For example, as it stands, I can offer any song at
> folkinfo in abc, MIDI, png and pdf and in any key. If there was for example
> to be found an error in the tune or a typo in the lyrics, only one change
> would be needed.

Tom

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-02 Thread Richard Robinson 
On Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 08:47:18PM +, John Chambers wrote:
> 
> 
> The main problem with making such a suggestion is that most
> of  the  suggestions I've gotten for enhancements have been
> based on the assumption that I have all the abc sitting  on
> the disk.  This isn't true. My Tune Finder doesn't save any
> tunes from the (275 now) other sites  where  it  finds  abc
> files.   It saves the URL and a few header lines.  When you
> make a request for a PS or GIF or MIDI version of  a  tune,
> it  connects  to  the  remote site, downloads the abc file,
> extracts the tune, and converts it on  the  fly.   Anything
> that  requires  searching through the tune collection would
> take several days.  Even a limited search of  another  site
> could take many, many minutes.  I have avoided implementing
> anything that requires more than just downloading a  remote
> file.  And my database is now up to around 60 MB, on a free
> "guest" account.  The folks at the MIT  EE  department  are
> supportive so far (and some of them are folk musicians ;-),
> but I do need to be somewhat careful of how much of a  disk
> hog I become.

Just out of interest, how long do you guess it would take to
actually grab all the ABC you're indexing (and how big would it
be) ... do it once and it would speed searching through them up.

The problem of which, apart from resources, is cacheing obsolete
versions ... maybe a protocol, or convention, or something, for
grab-an-ABC-*if*-it's-changed, would be useful ?

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-02 Thread John Chambers 
Jack Campin writes:
|
| What would be a nice compromise would be if the TuneFinder could
| send a transcriber-converted version if one existed, and generate
| a new one if not.  Could you add some sort of protocol for people
| to indicate they have such pre-converted files available?  (My own
| naming scheme is usually to have a "./abc" directory full of files
| with .abc extensions, and directories of converted files at the
| same level: "./midi" with .mid files, "./gif" with .gif files, and
| "./mov" with .mov QuickTime files, using the same basename for each
| version of the same tune; this scheme will work on any OS).  Up to
| you whether you'd cache them locally or use the transcriber's own
| site.

Yeah; I've thought about that a bit.  I've used your scheme
in  part  of my abc collection, and also the more usual one
of having them all in the same  directory,  with  different
suffixes.   I  don't have many cases where I keep more than
the abc, but I do have a few.

I actually had some code in my search bot  that  looks  for
both of these schemes.  It was almost never successful, and
I haven't kept it up.  Almost all the time of a web  search
bot  is in making and breaking connections, so checking two
variants of a file name will nearly triple the search time.
If  this hardly ever succeeds, there's an incentive to stop
doing it.

My searcher does cache some info about a site to  speed  up
the search.  For example, some servers only accept HTTP/1.0
or HTTP/1.1 requests.  Caching the string that  works  will
decrease the mean access time by about 1/3. If we can get a
few sites to adopt a standard for accompanying  .abc  files
with  other  files, it would be feasible to check from time
to time and cache the scheme used by a  site.   Of  course,
since I use both, it gets complicated.  It's also made even
more complicated by many sites' limit  of  3  chars  for  a
suffix.   This means that the searcher has to try both .mid
and .midi, and all of .mp3, .mpg3  and  .mpeg3.   And  some
sites  use  upper-case  suffixes,  doubling  the  number of
things you need to try.

It's possible that doing this after the search could  be  a
better  approach.  My database does save a list of the URLs
returned by a site, so a program could grovel through those
lists and look for files with related names, in the same or
adjacent directories.  It might be possible to discover the
scheme  in  use  at  a  site without any extra search time.
Saving the MIME type might be a good idea  here,  to  avoid
incorrect  matches  when  someone  is  using a suffix in an
unconventional manner.

At the moment, I don't see that doing all this  for  a  few
hits  is  particularly  worthwhile.  It would probably take
less cpu time to just find the abc and do the conversion on
the fly. But if people want to discuss it, and come up with
a scheme that a lot of sites will follow, I could certainly
add it to the Tune Finder's capabilities.

The main problem with making such a suggestion is that most
of  the  suggestions I've gotten for enhancements have been
based on the assumption that I have all the abc sitting  on
the disk.  This isn't true. My Tune Finder doesn't save any
tunes from the (275 now) other sites  where  it  finds  abc
files.   It saves the URL and a few header lines.  When you
make a request for a PS or GIF or MIDI version of  a  tune,
it  connects  to  the  remote site, downloads the abc file,
extracts the tune, and converts it on  the  fly.   Anything
that  requires  searching through the tune collection would
take several days.  Even a limited search of  another  site
could take many, many minutes.  I have avoided implementing
anything that requires more than just downloading a  remote
file.  And my database is now up to around 60 MB, on a free
"guest" account.  The folks at the MIT  EE  department  are
supportive so far (and some of them are folk musicians ;-),
but I do need to be somewhat careful of how much of a  disk
hog I become.

(OTOH, you should see the disk usage of the users  who  are
playing with online video.  60 MB?  Pah!!  I'll show you  a
*real* web file ...   ;-)

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-02 Thread Paulo Eleutério Tibúrcio 
Karl Dallas wrote:
> 
> No I'm a Human Shield volunteer.

God bless you and keep you.

Karl Dallas wrote:
> 
> So if I understand what you're saying about option 1: I display the abc
> code (of a file called tune.abc) as text but if the user clicks on it,
> instead of hearing proper abc, what they actually hear is tune.mid.
> Seems a bit like cheating, but I suppose it'd work (and MIDI's not all
> that bloated, compared with WAV or even MP3 or WMA).
> 

Really it's not cheating.  abc is neither a playing nor a display
encoding
system, but a descriptive encoding system.  It so happens that nowadays
computers
have systems available designed to specifically encode information meant
to
be played (MIDI, Wave a.s.o.) or viewed/printed (PostScript, TeX) while
abc,
originally meant to communicate melodic information via
ASCII-only-reliable
media, has been extended so as to generate some kind of output or other
(right now, I am planning yet another byproduct I need).


> Chris commented:
[skip lots]
> 3. Send the ABC to the client and have it converted there.  This only
> works  if  the client has conversion software installed and has their
> browser configured correctly, which is  only  feasible  for  a  small
> crowd who can coordinate their software. It can't be made to work for
> a general public site.
> 
[skip]
> I've worked on a few projects that use approach 3. But there are some
> major  problems  with this.  One is that no sensible user will permit
> downloaded code from  a  web  site  to  run  automatically  on  their
> machine.   This is how you get things like the email viruses that are
> the plague of the Microsoft portion of the Net.   [skip lots]

I am selective about plugins myself.  I get especially irritated with
some promissing ones that simply cease to read code they usually did if
you don't upgrade to whatever NEW!!! version they release every six or
four months (each one generally 50% bigger in HD space requirements).

However, some users might like a seamless integration of the rendering
application with the browser and that means a plugin if the browser
doesn't
have built-in support (I think they'll hardly ever have for abc) or if
the other options (server-side execution, pluriformat storage) don't
apply.
Netscape has a section on NS plugin writing at

  
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/plugin/index.htm

Those plugins might work with other browsers (Opera [http://opera.com],
for instance, according to their documentation).

Anyway, I think such a plugin would be of limited usability, as abc is a
very loose standard (remember, it was conceived for human consumption
with
processed output as a byproduct) and a lot of the files available on the
net use encoding features that do the task but must rely on specific
software for that (and some may use custom features allowed by the
standard
but hard to be predicted by programmers;  I'm in need of some to encode
Gregorian Chant, for instance, and I think I'll have to add more variety
to
the already existent for that).  This situation might be improved with
the
evolution of the abc standard itself and of initiatives such as The ABC
Project [http://sourceforge.net/projects/abc]
[http://abc.sourceforge.net/].

Once feasible, a plugin might be a solution, regardless of Chris's
remarks,
as far as the abc community is concerned (i.e., inside the abc world at
least, the developers are known and trusted), but for the common surfer
they
would always apply, so that the option to download the source or a
trusted
format should still be provided.

Paulo Eleutério Tibúrcio


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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-01 Thread Gerry McCartney 
Excellent!!

Hopefully music will neutralise the sounds of war.

Gerry McCartney
Somewhere in war-scarred Belfast
-
Richard Robinson wrote:

Are you a war correspondent these days Karl?  Doesn't seem like a good time
to be covering the Iraqi music scene.
> >
> > No I'm a Human Shield volunteer.
>
>
> That's a big gig. I hope it turns out well for all concerned.
>
> --
> Richard Robinson
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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-01 Thread Richard Robinson 

[rearranged somewhat]

> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Phil Taylor
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 03:07:15PM -, Karl Dallas wrote:
>
>> Are you a war correspondent these days Karl?  Doesn't seem like a good
>> time to be covering the Iraqi music scene.
>
> No I'm a Human Shield volunteer.


That's a big gig. I hope it turns out well for all concerned.

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-02-01 Thread Henrik Norbeck 
John Chambers wrote:
> 1. Have several files on your server, for the ABC and its translation
> to  the  other  formats (PS, GIF, MIDI, whatever).  This is fast, but
> takes a LOT of disk space.  ABC is small; all the other  formats  are
> hundreds or thousands of times bigger.
 
Not quite true... MIDI is only about 4 times bigger, GIF or PNG 
about 12 times bigger. So even a big abc collection, e.g. mine 
which is 654 kB, would only require about 11 MB total for having 
abc, gif and midi. This is much better IMO than loading down the 
CPU with conversions. I run a web server myself at work, and I 
would rather have an abc collection taking 11 or even 110 MB than 
have it bog down the CPU with programs to run for every GIF or 
MIDI download.


Henrik Norbeck, Stockholm, Sweden
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://home.swipnet.se/hnorbeck/ My home page
http://home.swipnet.se/hnorbeck/abcmus/  AbcMus player program
http://home.swipnet.se/hnorbeck/abc.htm  >1600 ABC tunes
http://surf.to/blackthorn Irish trad music band
http://www.rfod.se/folklink/  Links to Swedish music
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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread Jack Campin 
>> Is there any way to use abc in a webpage so it can be played, either on
>> loading, or when a link is clicked?
> There are really just three approaches to doing what Karl wants:
> 1. Have several files on your server, for the ABC and its translation
> to the other formats (PS, GIF, MIDI, whatever).  This is fast, but
> takes a LOT of disk space.  ABC is small; all the other formats are
> hundreds or thousands of times bigger.

MIDI, GIF and QuickTime aren't too bad.  For the tunes in one of the
chapters of my CD-ROM:

   ABC:  130K
   GIF:  636K
   MIDI: 142K
   QT:   418K

PostScript would be much more bloated, I haven't tried.

The advantage of doing it that way is that if the transcriber does
their own conversion, issues of ABC dialect variation don't matter
as much.  Users may still want the ABC (for transposing, doing their
own arrangements etc) but even if they're ABC power-users it can be
handy to have a converted form to see what the originator meant.


> 2.  Have just the ABC on hand, and convert it on the fly via CGI
> programs.  This looks the same to a user, but is slower.

And depends on the conversion utility understanding the dialect the
transcriber used.  There are certainly Muse and BarFly constructs
your software doesn't implement - how well does your converter do on
my alchemical music, or the piano/harp scores on my Dalkeith site?

In some cases I've tweaked the ABC for GIF or sound file generation
and not put the tweaked version up - this is for situations where
getting a good converted file required compromising the readability
of the source and where the conflict could be expected to go away
as ABC evolves.  (I don't upload ABC containing ugly hacks - I can
wait).  In this situation, since *I* can't get a good GIF or sound
file out of the ABC I've uploaded, you can hardly be expected to.

What would be a nice compromise would be if the TuneFinder could
send a transcriber-converted version if one existed, and generate
a new one if not.  Could you add some sort of protocol for people
to indicate they have such pre-converted files available?  (My own
naming scheme is usually to have a "./abc" directory full of files
with .abc extensions, and directories of converted files at the
same level: "./midi" with .mid files, "./gif" with .gif files, and
"./mov" with .mov QuickTime files, using the same basename for each
version of the same tune; this scheme will work on any OS).  Up to
you whether you'd cache them locally or use the transcriber's own
site.


> 3. Send the ABC to the client and have it converted there.  This only
> works if the client has conversion software installed and has their
> browser configured correctly, which is only feasible for a small
> crowd who can coordinate their software. It can't be made to work for
> a general public site.

It's SOP for Flash stuff - all those sites that say "upload the current
plugin from Macromedia or bugger off".  Antisocial as hell but it can
be done.

===  ===


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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread Jon Freeman 
From: "John Chambers"

> 1. Have several files on your server, for the ABC and its translation
> to  the  other  formats (PS, GIF, MIDI, whatever).  This is fast, but
> takes a LOT of disk space.  ABC is small; all the other  formats  are
> hundreds or thousands of times bigger.
>
> 2.  Have just the ABC on hand, and convert it  on  the  fly  via  CGI
> programs.  This looks the same to a user, but is slower.  It uses CPU
> time on the server.  But the only extra disk space is the programs.

A reason I haven't seen given for going for #2 is the flexibilty and ease of
maintanence it offers. For example, as it stands, I can offer any song at
folkinfo in abc, MIDI, png and pdf and in any key. If there was for example
to be found an error in the tune or a typo in the lyrics, only one change
would be needed.

Just hope we don't come to a point were CPU usage becomes a concern. That I
think would be a long way off but... does anyone use any caching system,
perhaps holding the x most frequently requested tunes in whatever format and
then some periodic tidying up?

Jon

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RE: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread Karl Dallas 
So if I understand what you're saying about option 1: I display the abc
code (of a file called tune.abc) as text but if the user clicks on it,
instead of hearing proper abc, what they actually hear is tune.mid.
Seems a bit like cheating, but I suppose it'd work (and MIDI's not all
that bloated, compared with WAV or even MP3 or WMA).

--
Karl Dallas, HoustonMedia
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Tel: +44(0)1274 823949
Mobile: 0771 980 5907
Please note: This is a personal communication, representing my own
personal views, and does not necessarily represent the views of any
organisation with which I may be connected, locally, nationally, or
internationally.


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of John Chambers
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 3:08 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

Chris commented:
| Karl Dallas wrote:
| > Is there any way to use abc in a webpage so it can be played, either
on
| > loading, or when a link is clicked?
| > If so, can anyone point me to where I can find out how to do this?
Does
| > the reader need to have some kind of a plug-in? If so, where can
this be
| > obtained? Could it be placed alongside the html file so a click will
| > install it on the reader's PC?
|
| No plug in is required for the abc-tune-finder webpage:
| http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/FindTune.html
|
| This is presumably what you want to do on your webpage.  Try it out.
I
| believe what they do here is connect to other people's collections of
| abc tunes on each individual server, then process the abc on their
| server (mit.edu) into whatever format the user clicks on, then
delivers
| it to the user.  I've thought of implementing my own version of that,
| but I haven't had time to work it out yet.

That's pretty accurate.  There are really just  three  approaches  to
doing what Karl wants:

1. Have several files on your server, for the ABC and its translation
to  the  other  formats (PS, GIF, MIDI, whatever).  This is fast, but
takes a LOT of disk space.  ABC is small; all the other  formats  are
hundreds or thousands of times bigger.

2.  Have just the ABC on hand, and convert it  on  the  fly  via  CGI
programs.  This looks the same to a user, but is slower.  It uses CPU
time on the server.  But the only extra disk space is the programs.

3. Send the ABC to the client and have it converted there.  This only
works  if  the client has conversion software installed and has their
browser configured correctly, which is  only  feasible  for  a  small
crowd who can coordinate their software. It can't be made to work for
a general public site.


As the one who foisted the Tune Finder on the world, I chose 2.  This
was  partly  because  I don't have the disk space.  But it was mostly
because the main intent of this site was to solve the problem of  the
long  time it was taking me to find tunes on other people's sites and
get them into a form that I could use.  This struck me as a good  job
for a computer ...

I've worked on a few projects that use approach 3. But there are some
major  problems  with this.  One is that no sensible user will permit
downloaded code from  a  web  site  to  run  automatically  on  their
machine.   This is how you get things like the email viruses that are
the plague of the Microsoft portion of the Net.   When  using  a  new
browser,  the  very  first  thing  I do is make sure that things like
java, javascript, active-X, and other "scripting" tools are disabled.
If  I  can't  do  that,  I  simply  don't use that browser.  (Even on
Windows, this is always possible.  You can grab the latest  Netscape,
which will turn off scripting reliably.)

So approach 3 will never work with users like me. And even with users
who  don't  understand  this  issue and leave scripting turned on, it
still doesn't work.  The recent Sun-vs-Microsoft  lawsuit  over  java
illustrateds  why.   Java is the best language for this, and it's not
very good.  The reason is that on Windows boxes, there are a  zillion
different  releases  out  there,  and they're all incompatible in too
many ways. This is intentional on Microsoft's part, because java is a
big  threat to them.  Providing a broken java (with different bugs in
different releases) has been a good way to persuade  developers  that
java  isn't useful for its main purpose.  Sun may have won the recent
court case, but appeals may last for years. This isn't as bad on most
other systems, where the java from Sun or the Open Source java are in
use, but even there, there are niggling little  problems  that  break
your code in subtle ways.

So unless you know that you have a small set of  communicating  users
who  can  be  relied on to keep their javas (or phps or whatever) all
compatible, don't even consider approach 3. If you do

Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread Richard Robinson 
On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 03:08:17PM +, John Chambers wrote:
> 
> OTOH, if you have the disk space, approach 1 is ideal.   You  convert
> the  ABC  once, and then it's just downloads.  No CGI scripts to fuss
> with, no CPU usage other than the server's read/write time.  And when
> there  are  problems,  you have the exact file available for testing.
> But it will use a lot more disk space.

True, but possibly not all that much, depending on what you want to
store.

Just to give a feel for the situation ...
My "tunebook" caches gifs, because I felt it was most important to
keep out of the way of the CPU (and because there haven't been any
objections concerning disk use ...) - currently 2,00 and some tunes.
The ABC for this comes to ~ 1 Mb (on my machine. I think, twice that
-ish on the Leeds server, on account of file-system block size) and the
gifs come to 10 times that, typically a gif is 10 times the abc. I'm not
doing MIDI, but I suspect that's a bit smaller than gif.

So to cache gif and midi for a couple of thousand tunes would be around
20Mb (or more, again depending of fs blocksize, which can be an issue with this
sort of size files) - which pushes the limits of a standard-free-web-space ISP
offering (which wouldn't, typically, offer CGI either), but maybe there aren't
a lot of other situations where a few 10s of MB would be a problem these days ?

of course,
#!/usr/bin/perl
require "Floodsofcounterexamples.pl";


Depending on how many formats you want to store, of course. EPS is
typically many times bigger.

-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem

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RE: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread Karl Dallas 
The idea is to STOP ass (of any nationality) getting kicked! :-)

--
Karl Dallas, HoustonMedia
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Tel: +44(0)1274 823949
Mobile: 0771 980 5907
Please note: This is a personal communication, representing my own
personal views, and does not necessarily represent the views of any
organisation with which I may be connected, locally, nationally, or
internationally.


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Christopher
Myers
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 1:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

Karl Dallas wrote:
> 
> I'm sure lots of people know the answer to this question, so
apologies.
> Is there any way to use abc in a webpage so it can be played, either
on
> loading, or when a link is clicked?
> If so, can anyone point me to where I can find out how to do this?
Does
> the reader need to have some kind of a plug-in? If so, where can this
be
> obtained? Could it be placed alongside the html file so a click will
> install it on the reader's PC?

No plug in is required for the abc-tune-finder webpage:
http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/FindTune.html

This is presumably what you want to do on your webpage.  Try it out.  I
believe what they do here is connect to other people's collections of
abc tunes on each individual server, then process the abc on their
server (mit.edu) into whatever format the user clicks on, then delivers
it to the user.  I've thought of implementing my own version of that,
but I haven't had time to work it out yet.  

Should be straightforward.  Here's what I envision for my site.
Have a list of tunes, each of which is a link to a cgi (run on my server
obviously).  Clicking the link will bring up a page with a web-viewable
image of the notation (png or gif), which can be generated to .ps on the
fly using your favorite rendering program, then converted to png.  On
this page could be more links to regenerate the page in plain abc, or
midi, also done via the cgi on my server.  

This must be what they do on the mit server.

> (Since writing the above, I've done some web searching, and found the
> following comment from Bruce Olson at http://users.erols.com/olsonw/:
> ("To the best of my knowledge you can't play ABC's from web browsers
and
> must copy the xx.ABC file to your computer. Then use ABC2WIN in
WINDOWS,
> or PLAYQABC in DOS, to play them (no tune display from the latter).)
> (Perhaps it would be possible to have a link that said something like
> Play tune which would play if the reader
had
> abc2win or similar installed. Would this work? I must try it - but
> probably not yet awhile since I'm leaving for Iraq in 14 days' time &
am
> running around like the proverbial blue-tail fly getting my travelling
> act together.)

Good luck overseas, and Godspeed!  Kick some Ass!

-Chris

> --
> Karl Dallas, HoustonMedia
> Please note: This is a personal communication, representing my own
> personal views, and does not necessarily represent the views of any
> organisation with which I may be connected, locally, nationally, or
> internationally.
> 
> To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to:
http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html

-- 
Christopher Myers, Graduate Software Developer 
Ingenta, Inc.
111R Chestnut St.
Providence, RI  02903
ph:  401.331.2014 x 102
em:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
aim: chrismyers001
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to:
http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread John Chambers 
Karl writes:
| I know I should (even more) know this but it's a few years since I gave
| up writing for Internet mags: how exactly do I get my ISP to associate
| text/vnd.abc with abc? Or does each browser have to execute it?

If it's a version of the apache server,  there's  a  config
file called "mime.types".  It needs the line:

text/vnd.abcabc

Can't get  much  simpler  than  that.   Other  servers  are
probably different, of course.

(Apache has had this in the distributed mime.types file for
several years now, but it usually has just the type and not
the "abc" suffix.   This  is  sensible,  because  different
systems are so inconsistent in their uses of suffixes.  But
it's one more thing to look for when you install a server.)

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread John Chambers 
Chris commented:
| Karl Dallas wrote:
| > Is there any way to use abc in a webpage so it can be played, either on
| > loading, or when a link is clicked?
| > If so, can anyone point me to where I can find out how to do this? Does
| > the reader need to have some kind of a plug-in? If so, where can this be
| > obtained? Could it be placed alongside the html file so a click will
| > install it on the reader's PC?
|
| No plug in is required for the abc-tune-finder webpage:
| http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/FindTune.html
|
| This is presumably what you want to do on your webpage.  Try it out.  I
| believe what they do here is connect to other people's collections of
| abc tunes on each individual server, then process the abc on their
| server (mit.edu) into whatever format the user clicks on, then delivers
| it to the user.  I've thought of implementing my own version of that,
| but I haven't had time to work it out yet.

That's pretty accurate.  There are really just  three  approaches  to
doing what Karl wants:

1. Have several files on your server, for the ABC and its translation
to  the  other  formats (PS, GIF, MIDI, whatever).  This is fast, but
takes a LOT of disk space.  ABC is small; all the other  formats  are
hundreds or thousands of times bigger.

2.  Have just the ABC on hand, and convert it  on  the  fly  via  CGI
programs.  This looks the same to a user, but is slower.  It uses CPU
time on the server.  But the only extra disk space is the programs.

3. Send the ABC to the client and have it converted there.  This only
works  if  the client has conversion software installed and has their
browser configured correctly, which is  only  feasible  for  a  small
crowd who can coordinate their software. It can't be made to work for
a general public site.


As the one who foisted the Tune Finder on the world, I chose 2.  This
was  partly  because  I don't have the disk space.  But it was mostly
because the main intent of this site was to solve the problem of  the
long  time it was taking me to find tunes on other people's sites and
get them into a form that I could use.  This struck me as a good  job
for a computer ...

I've worked on a few projects that use approach 3. But there are some
major  problems  with this.  One is that no sensible user will permit
downloaded code from  a  web  site  to  run  automatically  on  their
machine.   This is how you get things like the email viruses that are
the plague of the Microsoft portion of the Net.   When  using  a  new
browser,  the  very  first  thing  I do is make sure that things like
java, javascript, active-X, and other "scripting" tools are disabled.
If  I  can't  do  that,  I  simply  don't use that browser.  (Even on
Windows, this is always possible.  You can grab the latest  Netscape,
which will turn off scripting reliably.)

So approach 3 will never work with users like me. And even with users
who  don't  understand  this  issue and leave scripting turned on, it
still doesn't work.  The recent Sun-vs-Microsoft  lawsuit  over  java
illustrateds  why.   Java is the best language for this, and it's not
very good.  The reason is that on Windows boxes, there are a  zillion
different  releases  out  there,  and they're all incompatible in too
many ways. This is intentional on Microsoft's part, because java is a
big  threat to them.  Providing a broken java (with different bugs in
different releases) has been a good way to persuade  developers  that
java  isn't useful for its main purpose.  Sun may have won the recent
court case, but appeals may last for years. This isn't as bad on most
other systems, where the java from Sun or the Open Source java are in
use, but even there, there are niggling little  problems  that  break
your code in subtle ways.

So unless you know that you have a small set of  communicating  users
who  can  be  relied on to keep their javas (or phps or whatever) all
compatible, don't even consider approach 3. If you do, you will spend
all  your  remaining time trying to answer novice users who can't get
it to work right.

OTOH, if you have the disk space, approach 1 is ideal.   You  convert
the  ABC  once, and then it's just downloads.  No CGI scripts to fuss
with, no CPU usage other than the server's read/write time.  And when
there  are  problems,  you have the exact file available for testing.
But it will use a lot more disk space.

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RE: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread Karl Dallas 
No I'm a Human Shield volunteer.

--
Karl Dallas, HoustonMedia
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Tel: +44(0)1274 823949
Mobile: 0771 980 5907
Please note: This is a personal communication, representing my own
personal views, and does not necessarily represent the views of any
organisation with which I may be connected, locally, nationally, or
internationally.


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Phil Taylor
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 9:45 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

Karl Dallas wrote:

>I'm sure lots of people know the answer to this question, so apologies.
>Is there any way to use abc in a webpage so it can be played, either on
>loading, or when a link is clicked?

As Jon said, there is no plugin for .abc, but if the mime type is set
correctly the user can set his favourite abc program as a helper, and
clicking the link will then open the abc using that program.  This
works fine with BarFly on the Mac, and I imagine would work just the
same
on PCs.  The main problem is that most servers don't seem to have the
correct mime type set, and serve up the abc as text/plain.

>If so, can anyone point me to where I can find out how to do this? Does
>the reader need to have some kind of a plug-in? If so, where can this
be
>obtained? Could it be placed alongside the html file so a click will
>install it on the reader's PC?
>(Since writing the above, I've done some web searching, and found the
>following comment from Bruce Olson at http://users.erols.com/olsonw/:
>("To the best of my knowledge you can't play ABC's from web browsers
and
>must copy the xx.ABC file to your computer. Then use ABC2WIN in
WINDOWS,
>or PLAYQABC in DOS, to play them (no tune display from the latter).)
>(Perhaps it would be possible to have a link that said something like
>Play tune which would play if the reader had
>abc2win or similar installed. Would this work? I must try it - but
>probably not yet awhile since I'm leaving for Iraq in 14 days' time &
am
>running around like the proverbial blue-tail fly getting my travelling
>act together.)

Are you a war correspondent these days Karl?  Doesn't seem like a good
time to be covering the Iraqi music scene.

Phil Taylor


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RE: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread Karl Dallas 
I know I should (even more) know this but it's a few years since I gave
up writing for Internet mags: how exactly do I get my ISP to associate
text/vnd.abc with abc? Or does each browser have to execute it?

--
Karl Dallas, HoustonMedia
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Tel: +44(0)1274 823949
Mobile: 0771 980 5907
Please note: This is a personal communication, representing my own
personal views, and does not necessarily represent the views of any
organisation with which I may be connected, locally, nationally, or
internationally.


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Jon Freeman
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 8:39 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

From: "Karl Dallas"


> I'm sure lots of people know the answer to this question, so
apologies.
> Is there any way to use abc in a webpage so it can be played, either
on
> loading, or when a link is clicked?
> If so, can anyone point me to where I can find out how to do this?
Does
> the reader need to have some kind of a plug-in? If so, where can this
be
> obtained? Could it be placed alongside the html file so a click will
> install it on the reader's PC?

I don't know of a plug in as such but the mime type for abc is
text/vnd.abc.
I believe a user could assosciate that with an abc program.

At folkinfo (as with other sites), we run conversion routines on the abc
to
produce other formats such as a clickable MIDI by running abc2midi.
There
are those far more experienced in that game than I here but if you want,
I'll happily give you an outline of the way we do it using php should
you
need help.

There are sites, http://www.concertina.net for one that allow you to
enter
abc into a text box and then play it or view it. I did the same for a
short
while but gave up when I had a phone call from my ISP asking what
abcm2ps
was as an instance of the program had been running for something like an
hr
and using something like 90% CPU. I assume it was a bad abc doing the
damage - the alternative would be abuse - I mean trying to convert a
whole
volume of abcs.  Either way, I decided I couldn't afford to allow open
untested abcs on the web site with the shared server ISP deal I have.

Jon

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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread Christopher Myers 
Karl Dallas wrote:
> 
> I'm sure lots of people know the answer to this question, so apologies.
> Is there any way to use abc in a webpage so it can be played, either on
> loading, or when a link is clicked?
> If so, can anyone point me to where I can find out how to do this? Does
> the reader need to have some kind of a plug-in? If so, where can this be
> obtained? Could it be placed alongside the html file so a click will
> install it on the reader's PC?

No plug in is required for the abc-tune-finder webpage:
http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/FindTune.html

This is presumably what you want to do on your webpage.  Try it out.  I
believe what they do here is connect to other people's collections of
abc tunes on each individual server, then process the abc on their
server (mit.edu) into whatever format the user clicks on, then delivers
it to the user.  I've thought of implementing my own version of that,
but I haven't had time to work it out yet.  

Should be straightforward.  Here's what I envision for my site.
Have a list of tunes, each of which is a link to a cgi (run on my server
obviously).  Clicking the link will bring up a page with a web-viewable
image of the notation (png or gif), which can be generated to .ps on the
fly using your favorite rendering program, then converted to png.  On
this page could be more links to regenerate the page in plain abc, or
midi, also done via the cgi on my server.  

This must be what they do on the mit server.

> (Since writing the above, I've done some web searching, and found the
> following comment from Bruce Olson at http://users.erols.com/olsonw/:
> ("To the best of my knowledge you can't play ABC's from web browsers and
> must copy the xx.ABC file to your computer. Then use ABC2WIN in WINDOWS,
> or PLAYQABC in DOS, to play them (no tune display from the latter).)
> (Perhaps it would be possible to have a link that said something like
> Play tune which would play if the reader had
> abc2win or similar installed. Would this work? I must try it - but
> probably not yet awhile since I'm leaving for Iraq in 14 days' time & am
> running around like the proverbial blue-tail fly getting my travelling
> act together.)

Good luck overseas, and Godspeed!  Kick some Ass!

-Chris

> --
> Karl Dallas, HoustonMedia
> Please note: This is a personal communication, representing my own
> personal views, and does not necessarily represent the views of any
> organisation with which I may be connected, locally, nationally, or
> internationally.
> 
> To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: 
>http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html

-- 
Christopher Myers, Graduate Software Developer 
Ingenta, Inc.
111R Chestnut St.
Providence, RI  02903
ph:  401.331.2014 x 102
em:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
aim: chrismyers001
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html

Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread Phil Taylor 
Karl Dallas wrote:

>I'm sure lots of people know the answer to this question, so apologies.
>Is there any way to use abc in a webpage so it can be played, either on
>loading, or when a link is clicked?

As Jon said, there is no plugin for .abc, but if the mime type is set
correctly the user can set his favourite abc program as a helper, and
clicking the link will then open the abc using that program.  This
works fine with BarFly on the Mac, and I imagine would work just the same
on PCs.  The main problem is that most servers don't seem to have the
correct mime type set, and serve up the abc as text/plain.

>If so, can anyone point me to where I can find out how to do this? Does
>the reader need to have some kind of a plug-in? If so, where can this be
>obtained? Could it be placed alongside the html file so a click will
>install it on the reader's PC?
>(Since writing the above, I've done some web searching, and found the
>following comment from Bruce Olson at http://users.erols.com/olsonw/:
>("To the best of my knowledge you can't play ABC's from web browsers and
>must copy the xx.ABC file to your computer. Then use ABC2WIN in WINDOWS,
>or PLAYQABC in DOS, to play them (no tune display from the latter).)
>(Perhaps it would be possible to have a link that said something like
>Play tune which would play if the reader had
>abc2win or similar installed. Would this work? I must try it - but
>probably not yet awhile since I'm leaving for Iraq in 14 days' time & am
>running around like the proverbial blue-tail fly getting my travelling
>act together.)

Are you a war correspondent these days Karl?  Doesn't seem like a good
time to be covering the Iraqi music scene.

Phil Taylor


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Re: [abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread Jon Freeman 
From: "Karl Dallas"


> I'm sure lots of people know the answer to this question, so apologies.
> Is there any way to use abc in a webpage so it can be played, either on
> loading, or when a link is clicked?
> If so, can anyone point me to where I can find out how to do this? Does
> the reader need to have some kind of a plug-in? If so, where can this be
> obtained? Could it be placed alongside the html file so a click will
> install it on the reader's PC?

I don't know of a plug in as such but the mime type for abc is text/vnd.abc.
I believe a user could assosciate that with an abc program.

At folkinfo (as with other sites), we run conversion routines on the abc to
produce other formats such as a clickable MIDI by running abc2midi.  There
are those far more experienced in that game than I here but if you want,
I'll happily give you an outline of the way we do it using php should you
need help.

There are sites, http://www.concertina.net for one that allow you to enter
abc into a text box and then play it or view it. I did the same for a short
while but gave up when I had a phone call from my ISP asking what abcm2ps
was as an instance of the program had been running for something like an hr
and using something like 90% CPU. I assume it was a bad abc doing the
damage - the alternative would be abuse - I mean trying to convert a whole
volume of abcs.  Either way, I decided I couldn't afford to allow open
untested abcs on the web site with the shared server ISP deal I have.

Jon

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[abcusers] abc in web pages

2003-01-31 Thread Karl Dallas 
I'm sure lots of people know the answer to this question, so apologies.
Is there any way to use abc in a webpage so it can be played, either on
loading, or when a link is clicked?
If so, can anyone point me to where I can find out how to do this? Does
the reader need to have some kind of a plug-in? If so, where can this be
obtained? Could it be placed alongside the html file so a click will
install it on the reader's PC?
(Since writing the above, I've done some web searching, and found the
following comment from Bruce Olson at http://users.erols.com/olsonw/:
("To the best of my knowledge you can't play ABC's from web browsers and
must copy the xx.ABC file to your computer. Then use ABC2WIN in WINDOWS,
or PLAYQABC in DOS, to play them (no tune display from the latter).)
(Perhaps it would be possible to have a link that said something like 
Play tune which would play if the reader had
abc2win or similar installed. Would this work? I must try it - but
probably not yet awhile since I'm leaving for Iraq in 14 days' time & am
running around like the proverbial blue-tail fly getting my travelling
act together.)
--
Karl Dallas, HoustonMedia
Please note: This is a personal communication, representing my own
personal views, and does not necessarily represent the views of any
organisation with which I may be connected, locally, nationally, or
internationally.

To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html