New website, old songs (Bruce O.)

Subject: New website, old songs
From: Bruce O.
Date: 22 Mar 98 - 01:37 PM

I've got a website with some old Irish, Scots and English songs. Also an Irish tune index and some other tidbits.

www.erols.com/olsonw

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Alice
Date: 22 Mar 98 - 01:47 PM

Looks wonderful, Bruce. Lots to explore.
alice (your 14th visitor)

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: dulcimer
Date: 22 Mar 98 - 02:34 PM

Looks wonderful enough for me to save it in my "Favorites"!

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Richard
Date: 22 Mar 98 - 04:21 PM

Thanks Bruce. A useful resource. #26 Richard

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: BAZ
Date: 22 Mar 98 - 05:32 PM

Again thanks Bruce. What do you mean that's All at present. There's enough there to occupy me for ever!
Thanks again Baz #34
PS> I hope this doesn't mean you are going to stop adding comments to files we post and that we have to go looking ourselves!

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Rosie
Date: 22 Mar 98 - 08:06 PM

Bruce, THANK YOU! A great site to be bookmarked and treasured. Rosie P.S. Is your middle name GOD???

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Frank in the swamps
Date: 23 Mar 98 - 05:44 AM

With on-line Pals like you, we truly have "an embarrassment of riches". Thanks.

Frank I.T.S.

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: BFP
Date: 23 Mar 98 - 02:28 PM

I've tried the web site. www.erols.com/olsonw and get nothing with my internet explorer. Tried Alti Vista, Yahoo, etc. What am I doing wrong?

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Rosie
Date: 23 Mar 98 - 04:56 PM

BFP,

I don't have an answer for you but maybe a place where you can get an answer is directly from the source. Try Erols main page at www.erols.com. From there you can select a link to customer relations, domain questions etc. That FAQ&A place in Erols is: [e-mail] Good Luck

Rosie

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Bruce O.
Date: 23 Mar 98 - 06:23 PM

BFP, are you sure you didn't make a typo? The URL you have is correct. I haven't registered with any search engines, so you probably won't find it that way for about 3 months or more.

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Dan Mulligan
Date: 23 Mar 98 - 08:26 PM

Click here

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 23 Mar 98 - 10:22 PM

Fine site, Bruce. Maybe we're getting something moving here.

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Phyllis
Date: 24 Mar 98 - 08:46 AM

I would like to find information on the old song, My darling Clementine..

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Bruce O.
Date: 24 Mar 98 - 09:53 PM

Tunes for songs in the Irish section are now in ABC form in file S1.ABC. Scots ones I've just started, but have got "Bonny Jean of Aberdeen" (for Ball of Kiriemuir) and the version from "The Stuttering Lovers", 1906, BRDSFLW.

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Bruce O.
Date: 08 Apr 98 - 04:55 PM

ABC's for all the tunes in C. M. Simpson's 'The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music', 1966 are now on my website, except for 2 or 3 that I haven't figured out how to do in ABC.

I've been reformatting the texts to stagger lines and choruses, and am up againt the nasty HTLM lack of indent that Lamarca started on with Tabs in HTML. (left angle)pre(right angle) takes care of some of it, but I can't always use that on lines in my word processor, which with ASCII will only handle 10 characters per inch. I've tried mixing ASCII under 'pre' and '/pre', but get different fonts. Super and subscripts still work after 'pre' (with different font), but with several in a line, the line gets too long in ASCII, and folds over to the next. This is terrible, then, when looking at it with a web browser.

So I've still got the problem for many texts, that I can't indent correctly. I used to have a crude indent for HTML which I forgot. It was a prefexed used for a 'Table' setup. The tabbing was fixed, though, and didn't always look right.

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Bruce O.
Date: 19 Apr 98 - 09:32 PM

ABC's for all identified tunes for 16th and 17th century broadside ballads now done. Indexes of many Scots tunes and all 17th and many 18th century country dance tunes now added.

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Largo
Date: 22 Apr 98 - 03:06 AM

Thanks Bruce !

It goes right to me "favourites" !

Largo

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: JB3
Date: 29 Apr 98 - 02:58 AM

Great site! I can't get the lyrics to pull up when I hit the "go to" button. Are many of the transcriptions still in progress? Fo instance, I've been looking for the words to the old carol, "The Angel Gabriel", ever since I heard a version recorded by Sting on a contemporary collection of Christmas songs. I believe it was recorded by Maddy Prior also?

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Bruce O.
Date: 30 Apr 98 - 06:06 PM

New additions almost (not quite) every day, but 1st songs file got too big and I've started another. "Angel Gabriel" is a little ovef half way through the Scarce Songs 1. Tarditional versions are listed in The Traditional Ballad Index, and I think I listed others in my broadside ballad index. 1st line - "When righteous Joseph wedded was".

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: sodshanty
Date: 01 May 98 - 12:24 PM

Does anyone have the words to an 18th century popular song called "The Mill Mill-O"? I found the music in a guitar instruction book of the period published by Robert Bremner. Second, I'm looking for any Revolutionary War lyrics to "Lilliburlero." Any help would be much appreciated. sodshanty

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Frank McGrath
Date: 01 May 98 - 03:28 PM

Great Web Site. Congratulations!

The content needs no improvement but it is slow to load and therefore navigating through it is a little difficult.

Have you thought of using a database to store the info and using the web site as a front end for access?

You could use "Filemaker Pro 4" as the database and "Claris Home Page" will allow you to build direct links to it.

Both software packages are very easy to use and you will be quite competent in the use of both in a couple of hours. If you can write HTML then you will find both of these programs a doddle to use. They are inexpensive too and will run on Windows or Mac with a new developer version out soon that will run on Unix boxes.

However, congratulations again. I will be a regular visitor and I will be singing some of your collections before long. I shall spread the word and put in a link from our site.

Thank you for your great work in preserving the tradition.
Frank McGrath
Nenagh Singers Circle

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Frank McGrath
Date: 01 May 98 - 03:31 PM

Great Web Site. Congratulations!

The content needs no improvement but it is slow to load and therefore navigating through it is a little difficult.

Have you thought of using a database to store the info and using the web site as a front end for access?

You could use "Filemaker Pro 4" as the database and "Claris Home Page" will allow you to build direct links to it.

Both software packages are very easy to use and you will be quite competent in the use of both in a couple of hours. If you can write HTML then you will find both of these programs a doddle to use. They are inexpensive too and will run on Windows or Mac with a new developer version out soon that will run on Unix boxes.

However, congratulations again. I will be a regular visitor and I will be singing some of your collections before long. I shall spread the word and put in a link from our site.

Thank you for your great work in preserving the tradition.
Frank McGrath
Nenagh Singers Circle

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Frank McGrath
Date: 01 May 98 - 03:33 PM

I hate it when that happens!

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Bruce O.
Date: 03 May 98 - 10:07 PM

Don't worry about the double post, even Dick Greenhaus did it about a week ago. I'm not sure how to break things into smaller chunks yet, but I spent the weekend with Dick and Susan of DT and some other contributors here. Dick suggested I look at the asksam software for cross-referencing and searching files. I don't know yet how I would integrate this together, or even if I can in a number of smaller files. The one (actually two, Steve Roud's folksong and broadsides indexes)database system things I have, I don't like, because you've got to divide things under column heads, and I've found that searching for keywords, even in a single column is very time consuming. It's fine if you can remember exactly the full title or first line of tune title, but it seems to me that's rarely the case. Subject would probably be best, but here's just no 'standard set' to start with that's comprehensive and well known.

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Bruce O.
Date: 03 May 98 - 10:50 PM

My website is really old popular style (and sometimes not rally that either) and themes, the roots of folk. Rather few are directly folk as sung in the last 100 years.

It seems to me that most are going to want to scroll though to just to see whats' there, and even where there's a later folk version the title or first line won't be the same. How should it be organized? I realize the code name, ABCDEFG, etc., for tunes (in S1 and S2) is a bit awkward for finding the tune, but I don't have a better one yet.

How long a file is too long? My word processor can load 1 magabyte in about 10 seconds and the search command on a keyword can usually scan through the file in aout 5 seconds. My options would be to copy the file and look at it in my word processor. Web browsers take too much ram to do that well.

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: McGrath
Date: 04 May 98 - 11:33 AM

You make a very valid point about scrolling. It is similar to browsing through a book. You never know what gems of wisdom you may find.

However databases are very powerful so maybe you could use both approaches. Scroll through the titles and first verses of each song and "click on" to go to the complete version. Then with a "Search" section you could find under any category such as Title, Title variations, Author, Date, Lyrics, Style, Air(s), Geographical location etc.. So if for some reason you needed to find songs from England written before 1800 about Geese you will have a list popped up to you in a jiffy.

Try downloading trial versions of Claris Home Page and Filemaker Pro 4 along with sample templates and test the power. You will geth both at; http://www.claris.com/

By the way, I am not being critical, your work fills me with admiration, I just hope i can help and encourage you in some way.

Best Regards and Well Done Again.
Frank McGrath

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: Bruce O.
Date: 04 May 98 - 12:31 PM

asksam software looks pretty powerful, but I still think one's mostly going to be browsing or searching for keywords, and the most material in a big file is the easiest way. Search on the website, or copy to one's hard disk and use either web browser on word processor. I understand that some servers 'time out' before big files get completely copied. The dominant question is then how big a file is too big. Lots of little files are harder to maintain and it takes longer to copy all of a lot of little ones rather than one big one.

1 megabyte is too big. My present inclination is to cut files to about 1/4 megabytes, so that under reasonable conditions one can be copied in less than 2 minutes. Traffic on the internet since commercial and personal communications were allowed has increased transfer times so much that major universities now have an exclusive internet of their own and are planning another one. I worked at NIST which was one of the original planners of the internet, and they are now groaning about how the internet has slowed down so that data transfer has become very time consuming.

As far as subject headings in a database system that's too much work. It's for somebody to do their own searches on the stuff I have to aid in their subject study.

Subject: RE: New website, old songs
From: McGrath
Date: 04 May 98 - 03:20 PM

Even 2 minutes is too long. 30 seconds or thereabouts is just about accectable.

You can look upon most websites as "Flat File Databases". If you have your site split over numerous pages with access to each from one relatively small page you will find that,
1)Pages load faster and you will be doing the WWW a service by keeping data traffic down.
2)Browsing will be easier as we have become accoustomed to browsing through conveniently sized pages instead of one long scroll.
3)Site maintenance is easier. Updates and and changes can be done one page at a time and without having to take most of your site down.
4)Finding data will be easier like looking up chapters or an index in a book.
5)As frames are becoming more and more accessable as web users update their browsers you could, for example, have all of your navigation tools conveniently across the top of the screen. This would keep your maintenance levels to a minimum and reduce the bandwith which visitors to your use.

Unfortunately I don't know enough about the business to comment or advise about asksam software but you won't go very far wrong talking to the DT and Mudcat people. They have done a great job.

Best Regards
Frank McGrath