punkfolkrocker wrote:

Translating midi to printable music notation was considered an after thought, not a vital purpose.

That is indeed the crucial birth defect of the MIDI file format. For mere playback, the key signature, metric signature, anacrusis (leeneia's point 2.) and indeed all bar lines, clefs, spelling of accidentals (F# vs. Gb), repeat signs etc. would be irrelevant. For some reasons, the designers of the format included the first two data but not the others. Lyrics were allowed, although the most popular karaoke machines in those days demanded a different internal representation of lyrics. Speed of reading from floppy discs and minimization of internal storage were major issues.

Nowadays, MIDI files are only used for legacy reasons, i.o.w. for lack of a newer format of similar universal support. If sheet music is the focus, the best candidate is the compressed MusicXML format (.mxl) as readable and playable by all modern notation software including the free MuseScore. Joe Offer may decide to host files in that format as well, if asked by potential uploaders and downloaders.

On the other hand, ABC is Mudcat's mother tongue, like Jack observed. It has a strong focus on sheet music and supports most elements needed for mainstream notation. However, not everybody wants to use ABC by typing plain text. Users of MuseScore etc. will create MusicXML and transform the result to ABC with the powerful tool xml2abc.

If your favourite notation software does not support MusicXML (or ABC directly), you can try your luck with conversion software that starts from MIDI files, such as MidiZyx2abc. Some additional work is indispensable, notably taking care of repeat signs including boxes. First of all, observe leeneia's points 1. through 4. (Point 5. has nothing to do with the MIDI file format, if I'm not mistaken.)

As for point 2., most software products will do it by themselves when exporting MIDI files. Try it out before doing superfluous work.