I wrote:
"A disadvantage of modern tablature (unlike Renaissance tablature) is that the rhythm isn't indicated."

PoppaGator wrote:
"I beg to differ. The first guitar tablature that I ever encountered, and which was extremely helpful to my education in fingerpicking and other such "folk" techniques, employed the exact same method for indicating musical time as does standard notation: measures, time-signatures, whole/half/quarter/eighth notes and rests, etc.
[...]
This kind of full-featured guitar tablature was commonly available in the mid-to-late 1960s in the books of Stephan Grossman and Happy Traum, in a large selection of folk-guitar books put out by Oak Publications, and (if I'm not mistaken) in periodicals like Sing Out!
as well."

I have one book by Happy and Artie Traum (I believe the title is _Rock Guitar_) and one book by one of them (can't remember which one), which is, I believe, called _Finger-Picking Styles for the Guitar_. I know that the latter book is published by Oak Publications. Both books have both conventional notation and tab. I think the tab is divided up by measures and it might include a time signature, but I don't remember. I am fairly sure that no indication of the rhythm is given, but one can always refer to the conventional notation above.

I use the fingerpicking book fairly often and I sometimes do refer to the tab.

I'm not familiar with the kind of more elaborate tablature that you refer to, but I can see where it could be useful. I was born in 1963 and started playing the guitar when I was 20, so I'm not likely to have seen many books published in the 1960s, unless they've been reissued, I get them out of the library, or buy them used. This method, though I can see its advantages, doesn't seem to have caught on. The Traum Brothers' _Rock Guitar_ book was first published in 1967, I believe, and I bought it in about 1983. I happened to be looking at it the other day and checked when it was first published.

I agree with you completely about not being dogmatic about methods of teaching and learning. However, my personal opinion is that while tablature isn't in itself a crutch, it is used as such by many people. It is worth biting the bullet and learning to read standard notation because of the advantages listed by myself and others above. If someone doesn't want to, that's okay, too. It's not going to run away and if a person decides to learn it at some later date, it will still be there.

A serious disadvantage of tab is that it's not easy to use it to transpose, at least downwards. Not that it's easy to transpose using conventional notation, but I imagine it's easier (I've never tried with tab).

After all, both are just means to an end.

I have never bothered to look at or download tab from the internet. I have looked up lyrics and chords, though.