[abcusers] blasphemy! A separate project...?
On Fri, 9 Nov 2001, Richard Robinson wrote: Another approach is to ignore all existing implementations and create an altogether new syntax. No, please no ! ! ! ! ! Well ... maybe this might be worth someone's while ? Being an altogether new syntax, it wouldn't be ABC; but we could migrate to it, if it works better ;-) But, it would be a separate, different, project. ha - caught you red-handed! ;-) Blasphemy! Another project...? Let me tell you the dark side of my ABC point of view: ABC is _very_ nice, but is _way_ too limited. It was designed with too little goals in mind. As a real-world musician, I want to tweak current ABC so that it can do my choral scores reasonably well. As a computer guy, I already have a new syntax ready that just waits to be put down on paper... I let you guess the reasons why I didn't put it down on paper. But if you're interested, wave your hand at me. Later, Guido =8-) -- Guido Gonzato, Ph.D. gonzato at sci . univr . it - 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 8027958 --- Timeas hominem unius libri To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] blasphemy! A separate project...?
Hello Guido, Guido Gonzato wrote: Let me tell you the dark side of my ABC point of view: ABC is _very_ nice, but is _way_ too limited. It was designed with too little goals in mind. As a real-world musician, I want to tweak current ABC so that it can do my choral scores reasonably well. As a computer guy, I already have a new syntax ready that just waits to be put down on paper... I let you guess the reasons why I didn't put it down on paper. But if you're interested, wave your hand at me. I also see the sometimes hurting limits of the abc standard as it is. the problem is that there is a real big pile of content that uses the actuall standard. I looked into my files, and found that the abc files I transcribed are a pile of about 3 MB (plain ASCII). Assuming that other peoples who are listed as large collections at the abc homepage also have big collections besides what is in the net right now we are talking of at least 60 MB of content (another approximation is to multiply the 14000 titles of the www abc index with an single tune size of about 20KB makes 280.000 KB ). So if an entirely new syntax appears how will this syntax interprete this pile ? what are your solutions? will you write an all plattform automatic conversion tool and is it sure that no part of thecontent gets lost in this process? I am honestly interested and my questions are not cynical. But there are serious problems that would be created by a new standard. Simon Wascher - Vienna, Austria PS: this big pile of content is why I belive that bachkwards compatability in files overrules backwards comatability in programs. http://members.chello.at/simon.wascher/ To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] blasphemy! A separate project...?
Guido Gonzato said - As a computer guy, I already have a new syntax ready that just waits to be put down on paper... I let you guess the reasons why I didn't put it down on paper. But if you're interested, wave your hand at me. Might be a good idea Guido. It would take the pressure of a simple system that is already groaning at the seams trying to cope with everything everybody is throwing at it. I was toying with the idea of going the opposite way and coming up with a definition for abc lite or perhaps acbxp (exchange protocol) based solely on the principle of exchanging relatively simple musical and documentary information regardless of the use to which it would be put. Anybody interested? Bryan Creer
Re: [abcusers] blasphemy! A separate project...?
Guido Gonzato wrote: As a computer guy, I already have a new syntax ready that just waits to be put down on paper... Does anybody have any idea how many ascii based music notation formats there are? I mean if we're talking about a brand new standard, we ought to have a look at the full picture, not just abc. Simon Wascher wrote: (another approximation is to multiply the 14000 titles of the www abc index with an single tune size of about 20KB makes 280.000 KB ). Actually the www abc index is too outdated to be of much value here. I know of individual sites with more than 14 000 tunes each. It's hard to estimate the total number of abc tunes out on the web, but it's certainly more than 50 000 and probably far more than 100 000. Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] blasphemy! A separate project...?
Simon Wascher [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I looked into my files, and found that the abc files I transcribed are a pile of about 3 MB (plain ASCII). Assuming that other peoples who are listed as large collections at the abc homepage also have big collections besides what is in the net right now we are talking of at least 60 MB of content (another approximation is to multiply the 14000 titles of the www abc index with an single tune size of about 20KB makes 280.000 KB ). I would say that much of this material is such that it can use the current ABC definition till kingdom comes -- `Celtic' folk music and other one-melody-line-plus-chords stuff. At least this applies to the several megabytes of ABC-notated music on my machine. It seems that therefore a great portion of that corpus will never have to be translated into another representation. If people do come up with a new notation that is better for multivoice music, complicated classical scores etc. then by all means use that for those kinds of music. I for one am quite happy with ABC the way it is because it fits my requirements pretty much perfectly (with some tweaking which could be made unnecessary without throwing all of ABC out the window). Any completely-new notation had better be as simple as ABC for my uses before I personally am going to jump ship. Mind you, I'm all in favour of updating the ABC standard but not if new functionality is invented wholesale. Let's try and bring the various implementations together and build from there. So if an entirely new syntax appears how will this syntax interprete this pile ? what are your solutions? will you write an all plattform automatic conversion tool and is it sure that no part of thecontent gets lost in this process? I'm sure something could be worked out. A conversion tool doesn't necessarily have to work on all platforms -- there could be a Web-based conversion service for those who cannot or will not run, e.g., Perl locally to convert their files. Anyway, if a backwards-incompatible version of the ABC language (rather than something entirely new and separate) is agreed upon then there should be a way of tagging new-style files so that ABC processing software can still work with both flavours without having to guess. We could do it XML-style so that the first line of a file (or tune?) reads %%ABC version=2.0 (and this would also be the natural place to put `encoding=utf-8' and such-like if desired). Anselm To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
