I can read music quite well, and until I started working on some ABC formats at Jon's site, writing a midi was much faster than writing ABC. Now that I've learned a little ABC, it's starting to get faster. All this to say -- Jon was right about "depends on the user." ABC may seem easier, and it may be if you are starting to learn both note reading and ABC from the beginning -- but those of us who have instilled sight reading of notes for many years, and do it quite well, find that easier at this point in time.

Susan, I can do either. The point is, these songs are nice, and I enjoy learning them.

My main problem today is that I don't have ink for my printer. And even though I can sightread the notes so well I can "hear" the song -- transcribing it is difficult when I can't see a hard copy in front of me -- and for some reason I can't keep two windows open when I use Cakewalk.

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Just another thought here -- IMO, the casual user (me until about a year ago) would get more use from a midi. Usually all I want is to hear a tune quickly. I now use the tune-0-tron at concertina.net to convert an ABC file to a midi quickly. So I can use either format, and it really makes no difference to me.