As far as I remember what Mark mentions is likely to be a problem with anything just passing "plain dots" to abcm2ps. I think there was a more advanced way involving user input but for what we tried, the tab generation only sees the note as it's to be set on the score.

(And I'd never have had the programming ability to take things further and lack the ability to say know what I'm doing with say up the neck positions on guitar even if the abc->score capability was there.)

Sort of upshot there is that sort of "automatic conversion" should work for instruments such as a whistle and my type of open single line open string GDAE folk melody playing (and anyone willing to venture into the mysteries of postscript could have a go at their own) but I only imagine it working for "simple purposes".