Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup makemicromusic Re: [MMM] Re: microabc with support for Sagittal Notation System

Hello.

J.Smith escreveu:
> > Well.
> > Please tell me that in spite of everything I'm reading here, that > this program has a GUI. If not, could someone then explain to me how
> this program -- or any such program using only command-lines -- is
> an advantage to everyday users, as opposed to programs with a > user-friendly GUI?

I use command-line programs about 85% the time everyday. I use
command-line programs to read/edit files, to connect/disconnect
internet, to reboot/halt the system, to listen to music files, to make
music scores, to see the calendar, to convert a collection of mp3 files
to ogg or vice-versa, to configure the system, to manage files and
directories (copying, deleting, linking, moving, listing, locating...),
to read the manuals for programs, to call GUI programs, to print files,
to check/manage the processes that are running, to listen to CDs, to
create/copy CDs, etc... The remarkable exceptions are Mozilla, gv and
Emacs, which are GUI programs I use frequently. But even these I usually
call and control from keyboard commands.

The first advantage for me is that I don't need to move the hands off
the keyboard to get the mouse... another clear advantage is that they
can easily used to make compound commands and scripts. They can be very
small and can use only the essential standard libraries to compile, thus
they can run fastly and can be easily ported to several plataforms. They
can run without interference of a human user, for automated tasks, like
to compile a songbook with the choosen music pieces (e.g. in a web
service, but you can take advantage of this at home too). And they can
be made yet more user-friendly by being called from a front-end program
(either GUI or command-line driven).

The main reason I see for some people be afraid to use command-line
driven software is that their operating system provides too poor support
for this kind of interface -- this is the case of many Windows users
(there are also people who cannot find the letters on their keyboards).
They think of command-line as their experiences with that awful DOS
Prompt, mainly with no `doskey' running. Even file links were not
implemented for DOS Prompt! If you are using Windows, command-line
programs can be really excruciatingly painful and tedious. There are
work-arounds, by tweaking the system configuration, setting paths,
activating `doskey', but I have no idea of how to do this (I used win95
and win98 for some time, but I was told that several config files were
removed or changed in more recent Windows versions).

> > Let me clarify up front that I do NOT want to denigrate the use of > such programs, nor the immense thought and effort (not to mention > time) spent in creating them. I have no doubt that this is a worthy > musical software. If a composer is comfortable with this method, more
> power to them indeed.
> > My one and only complaint here is in the counter-intuitive, > user-unfriendly, excruciatingly painful and tedious means by which a > mere handful of notes are produced. If I wish to use this software --
> or another similar to it -- I am immediately discouraged from doing
> so by the nearly vertical learning-curve. Frankly, as my time here in
> your world is limited, I'd rather spend it making music in the most
> expeditious manner possible.

I am not willing to spend time studying GUI libraries and writting GUI
code. I only think of to write some GUI front-end when a command-line
tool needs of many options to run. For example, I wrote a front-end to
Csound dnoise utility (tkdnoise.tcl), as well as a Csound program with
GUI to experiment with ETs and induced spectra (EDexplorer.csd):
http://br.geocities.com/hfmlacerda/misc/

I hope you can find a GUI microtonal music software that can be easier to use than microabc and ABC tools. So far, I am very glad with the results I can get with microabc and ABC tools.

> > I just recently downloaded Csound, a program that until recently you > couldn't have paid me cash to attempt to deal with. I decided to give
> it a test-run only after Dave's most recent work was posted...and
> then, only after discovering that there was at least one GUI (Blue)
> that I could use with it to reduce command-line excesses to a
> minimum.

I could not do nothing with any front-end to Csound I've tried so far (I
didn't try Blue because it is written in Java, and also because those fruitless tryings with Csound GUI front-ends).

> > (I might note here that I foolishly took a peek at the Csound > reference manual and as a consequence, lay down on the floor in a > fetal position for several hours. I was later roused out of this > state by the gentle application of kicks by my wife.)
> > We've had this discussion before. But I have to say again that the > nearly infinite capabilities of such programs (also their > availability as freeware) don't at all compensate for the equally > near-infinite trouble it takes to use them. For those who enjoy > working with the left-brain, linear aspects of command-line > interfaces it's no problem.....which of course, leaves the rest of us
> (especially beginners) entirely out in the cold. Deliberate > discrimination? Hope not.

???

> > Suppose a poet wanted to compose a sonnet to be read by another poet
> to an audience. He sits down to pencil and paper -- only to discover
> that he must first compose his sonnet in Sumerian cuneiform, then > hand it to a translator, who renders it to English then gives it to > the reading poet. The first poet won't know if his Sumerian cuneiform
> renders to English accurately, until this cumbersome process is > finished. If he needs to alter a word or phrase, he cannot simply > erase....he must again use Sumerian cuneiform and repeat until > satisfied. Hardly an elegant solution to writing a sonnet. That's not
> to say that good poetry couldn't be written thus; but how many poets
> do you think would rather just do it themselves with pencil and > paper?

That is a *very* important point!!!
ABC notation (like LilyPond, M-TeX, Guido, PMX and other textual music
notations) IS NOT to ``jamming'' with the computer!
Once you have composed your music, you can easily (with a bit of
practice) and fastly enter it in the computer and get your score or
sound rendering.
ABC is not for improvisations: you need know in advance what you will
notate.

> Some of the ingenuity that goes into creating these wonderful > programs could surely be directed towards creating a user-friendly > GUI to easily access them, yes?

It is not `ingenuity'; it is _convenience_.

BTW, are you willing to write a GUI? Who are? GUI front-ends are welcome
anyway. microabc is under GNU GPL, so anyone is free to add a GUI and
share it.

> NOTE: If the this program does indeed have a user-friendly GUI, I > hereby apologize for the above rant and make use of the following > quote --
> > "Never mind." -- Ms. Emily Latella

IMO, microabc has a user-friendly command-line interface, each day
becoming better :-)

Regards,
Hudson

P.S.
I've already said that I can help anyone who are interested in microabc
on how to compile it and use it (the same for the required ABC tools).
That remains true.

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🔗Magnus Jonsson <magnus@...>

🔗Hudson Lacerda <hfmlacerda@...>

Magnus Jonsson escreveu:
> Hi Hudson,

Hi Magnus.

> > Regretfully I still can't access geocities since it's blocked in
> China (grrr).

I am going to send a copy to you.

> With regards to to your discussion with Jon Smith, I absolutely agree
> with you, ABC is inherently not very interactive so it doesn't > benefit much from a GUI, and GUIs are horribly painful to write
> anyway. I think the best way you can make it more userfriendly right
> now is eliminating the need for abcpp, like you talked about (maybe
> this is already done?), and eliminating the need for "cat" and things
> like that.

Yes, you don't need abcpp/cat anymore. Now microabc does the replacement
of pitch macros by itself. For Sagittal notation you don't need even of
a definitions file (the expected default input for microabc), then this
is all you need to do:

First,
Write the music file:

X:1
T:My song
C:Me
M:4/4
K:Am
[ A -1][ C/ ][ E ][ F/ ] [ E ]4 |
[ A -1][ C/ ][ E ][ F/ ] [ D ]4 |
% etc.

Then,
Generate ABC for MIDI:
microabc -i- -pinput.abp -ooutput4midi.abc
Generate ABC for PS:
microabc -i- -pinput.abp -ooutput4ps.abc

Finally,
Generate a PS score:
abcm2ps output4ps.abc
Generate MIDI file(s):
abc2midi output4midi.abc

If that becomes the main usage of microabc (as a preprocessor), I may
decide to remove the -i- option (by default, microabc reads macro
_definitions_ from stdin, that could be changed to _replacing_ macros
from stdin). However, for this while I am more tempted to simply to add
such a script to the microabc package (hey, I could make a tcl/tk GUI
for this :-) :

#!/bin/sh
microabc -i- -p${1}.abp -o${1}-midi.abc
abc2midi ${1}-midi.abc
microabc -i- -P${1}.abp -o${1}-ps.abc
abcm2ps ${1}-ps.abc -O ${1}.ps
# ps2pdf {1}.ps

> > Would it be a good idea to make microabc a sourceforge project?

Actually, I am registered in the ``ABC Project'' (http://abc.sf.net)
exactly due to microabc, but I could not yet learn how to use CVS to
manage the files there. BTW, if you (or anybody here) know CVS, I would
like to get started...

> > ~Magnus

Cheers,
Hudson Lacerda

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🔗Jon Szanto <jszanto@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@...>

🔗Hudson Lacerda <hfmlacerda@...>

Jon Szanto escreveu:
> Dear Hudson,

Dear Jon,
That is all OK. :-)

> > I started to write a long discussion, but I realized that it would
> simply (once again) pull the discussion away from music (and
> music-making) and back into the world of computational usage and
> interface. We don't need that. Just let me say that I'm happy for you
> that you get productivity out of a keyboard, but please don't assume
> that others choose alternate ways because they aren't bright enough,
> or their op system isn't robust enough, to sit there and type all
> day.

The subject was not about choosing alternative ways: what I understood was that you simply assume that a piece of software is not user-friendly at all only because it is command-line driven (thus, non-GUI is bad by definition, and the _option_ to write command-line programs is just foolish and void). I use command-line software when I find it convenient, and I use GUI software (as well as the mouse) when I find it convenient. GUIs don't exist because those troubles some people may have; GUIs exist because there are certain tasks that can be more properly acomplished that way.

The same way, command-line software is more suitable for certain tasks. microabc can only read text from a file/stream and print out text to another file/stream. Its output is intended to be processed by other command-line programs (abcm2ps, abc2midi, abcpp). There is absolutely no reason to write it as GUI program. This allows users to integrate microabc in the GUI environment they wish (runabc, flabc, tkabc...) and edit the files with their favourite editors (Emacs, VI, Jed, NotePad, KEdit...). I guess you ignored the purpose of microabc when you wrote that criticism.

To be frank, sometime ago I considered to write a Tcl/Tk front-end to microabc. I gave up the idea when I tried to imagine how to combine all the nearly 40 microabc commands in a graphical interface, only to build a small text file one could easily write by hand.

Now that Sagittal preprocessing is working and more people can be interested in microabc, I might write a GUI front-end in Tcl/Tk wherein the user could, for example, choose the tuning and in/out filenames, and then press a button to generate the output, see the score or listen to the MIDI output. But this can be done with runabc.tcl (or with other ABC front-ends), instead of with a new software:

http://ifdo.pugmarks.com/~seymour/runabc/top.html

I think runabc.tcl can be just configured to run a script which calls microabc and then abcm2ps or abc2midi, instead of running directly abcm2ps or abc2midi.

> > I wish you the best of luck on you microabc systems, and hope that
> people find them useful.
> > Cheers, Jon

Thanks, and cheers,
Hudson

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