ABC Music Notation: History
by John Chambers
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This chapter documents some of the known history of the ABC music notation and its software.
If you know of any significant events (especially software releases and creation of new
web sites), please let me know.
- 1993
-
-
-
- December 8
- Version 1.0 of
abc2mtex,
a translator from ABC to MusicTex notation.
- 1994
-
- Jan 10
- Version 1.1 of
abc2mtex.
- May
- Version 1.2 of
abc2mtex.
-
- 1995
-
- January
- Version 1.3 of
abc2mtex.
- March
- Version 1.4 of
abc2mtex.
- September
- Jim Vint's abc2win version ___ announced for Windows 3.?.
- October
- Version 1.5 of
abc2mtex.
- 1996
-
- October
- Version 1.6 of
abc2mtex.
- February
- First public version of
abc2ps,
a program that converts ABC directly to PostScript.
It is a C program that runs on Unix systems.
W95 and Mac versions eventually appear. [When?]
- July
- Brenda Holloway
wrote an ABC interpreter for the Magic Cap operating system;
it played ABC tunes through its built-in MIDI synthesizer. It was written
up in two issues of Handheld Systems Journal, but died with the demise of
its platform. Here is an
article
about it.
- October
- First public version of
abc4mac,
a Macintosh program that combined
abc2ps and
abcMIDI.
- November
- First use of w: for words beneath the notes, in
abc2ps.
- 1997
-
- January
- Version 1.6.1 of
abc2mtex.
This may have been the version used to write the first ABC syntax standard,
first as a narrative
description,
and then in BNF format
by Henrik Norbeck.
- March
- First public release of
BarFly,
an ABC editor and player for the Macintosh.
- March 31
- First beta release of
abcmus,
an ABC editor and player that runs on Windows 3.1/3.11, Windows 95, and Windows NT 4.0.
- May 10
- First public release of
abcmus.
-
-
- June
- First public release of
Muse,
a full-scale shareware music editor from Laurie Griffiths that speaks abc.
It can print, play, handle several harmony parts and create guitar tablature.
It runs under Windows 95 or Windows NT.
- 1998
-
- March 3
-
Jean-Francois Moine's abcm2ps (multi-staff and multi-voice)
variant of abc2ps was first announced. This was a version with
multiple staffs and multiple voices.
- March
- Last-known message on ABC developers list.
Everyone seems to agree that developers and users should all talk together,
and the message traffic isn't large enough to justify two lists.
- May 12
-
Michael Methfessel released abc2ps version 1.3.0,
the first version with multiple voices.
-
-
- 1999
-
-
April
-
Chris Walshaw announced that he was ready to write a new version of the
ABC standard, triggering a lot of abcusers list activity to get agreement
on the exact form of various extensions.
-
-
- Nov
- Paul Schwartz's ABC Convert-A-Matic
is a web page with a that accepts ABC and produces staff notation,
either as JPEG, PDF or MIDI. It also has
on-line documentation.
- 2000
-
- January 1
- All ABC software passes into the new millenium without any Y2K problems at all,
because music is timeless!
(Actually, there was a bit of discussion on several mailing lists,
and after several months, nobody has reported an ABC program with a Y2K problem.)
- January
- Dave Holland announced a preliminary version of an
ABC viewer for the Palm Pilot.
Some time later, it moved to
Dave Holland's ABC page.
- Feb
-
abctab2ps
is a program for typesetting music and (lute) tablature.
- May
-
Skink,
a java ABC tool
written by Wil Macaulay,
was announced.
- May 26
- The
sourceforge ABC project was established,
to provide a common Open-Source repository for ABC software.
- June
- Pointer to
tabledit program
for guitar tablature posted to abcusers.
[When I find out the actual date for this, I'll move this entry.]
- 2001
-
- February
- Bryan Creer announced
ABC2NWC,
a translator between ABC and
NoteWorthy Composer file format.
- February
- Christoph Dalitz announced a Macintosh version of
abctab2ps,
built by Hank Heijink.
- June
- Steve Spencer-Jowett announced PalmABC,
an ABC editor and player for PalmOS.
- September
- Guido Gonzato announced his
ABC pre-processor,
which does a number of useful transformations of ABC files, including
translations between various dialects.
- 2002
-
- March
- Matthew Junker's
http://my.execpc.com/~mjunker/abc-mode.el
"abc-mode" emacs macros for editing abc.
-
- May
- Richard Robinson's
abc tune comparison program first appeared.
This is a tool that tries to measure the similarity of tunes.
- 2002
-
- July
- Bryan Creer's
Abacus 1.0.0 announced.
Abacus is an abc editor/player/printer programme for Windows.
- 2003
-
- April
- Mike Casey announced
FIDDLEABC,
an abc program for Windows that displays fiddle or banjo fingerboards
while it plays the notes.
- 2003
-
- July
- Guido Gonzato announced
ABC Current Practices,
which documents the ABC features and extensions that are implemented
in several of the most popular current ABC programs.
- 2004
-
- May
- ___
- 2005
-
- May
- ___
- 2005
-
- Dec
- ABC Navigator
is a new (and free) Windows program that is an ABC program.
It handles editing, playing and printing the music.
If you know of any significant ABC events not listed here,
please let me know.
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Copyright 2001, 2002 by John Chambers