The truth is I almost never read an ABC file. I run it through abcm2ps and display the music using GSview, a free (for home use) PostScript display program that will also create Adobe PDF files for you. With that setup, you don't need a PostScript printer and you have the ability to share scores over the Net without the recipient having to learn ABC.

If I'm creating my own ABC file, I find it easy to just type the ABC code while looking at the original score. I'm not good at hearing a melody in my head and coding it directly as ABC but I can create a MIDI file using a synth keyboard and translate that to ABC as a skeleton to start working on.

A lot of the ABC files I create are Eastern Orthodox liturgical pieces in four-part harmony. It gets me into some of the more exotic ABC extensions so a program like Five Line Skink won't handle a great deal of what I do. I really depend on the abcm2ps program.

      - Mark