Re: Transoposing Software

DavBarnert wrote:
> In short, I'm screwed.   It's just gone. Donde drano. And you know
> what? I've learned to accept it. I've moved on. Now I'm spending
> thousands of hours doing abc stuff and in 15 years, the files will
> probably be just as meaningless.

Probably not. ABC is a *VERY* well-documented (and very simple, and very 
widely accepted) format. There will probably be format converters 
between ABC and MIDI "forever".

And the same thing is true, to a lesser extent, for MIDI. Yes, we may 
eventually abandon it... but if we do there will be a plethora of 
programs for converting from it to whatever replaces it.

So if you're concerned about this, the simple way to protect yourself is 
to always save your scores in a portable format (MIDI's probably the 
simplest and most widely available choice) as well as in the program's 
proprietary format. The latter's likely to generate better printouts, 
since it can carry additional information... but, at worst, re-entering 
those details is a lot less work than re-entering the whole score.

And if you're really in a belt-and-suspenders mood, print all your 
scores and file 'em somewhere. That way, even if the worst happens and a 
massive solar flare knocks out our whole electronic civilization, you'll 
still have a human-readable copy you can play from (or hand-edit back 
into the computer when civilization restarts.)



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Joe Kesselman, http://www.lovesong.com/people/keshlam/
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