Entering ABC using GNU Emacs and an ABC major mode is really easy, partly because of Emacs and its ABC mode and partly because ABC was designed to be easy to enter. In my editor I enter Ctrl-c s and a new tune is added to the current file. It enters the X value and then prompts me for values of a list of commands like T, C, B, S, M, Q, K and the MIDI instruments to use for various aspects (i.e., melody, chords, bass, etc.). The ABC mode also has a point-and-click note entry facility where you simply click on a note or expression symbol and it's entered in the ABC file. I don't use point-and-click very often because typeing ABC directly from a score is so quick and natural.

People developing music software are usually focused on the musical aspects of the problem and on quality rendering of the score. Some products have spent a lot of development time on specialized interfaces for note entry but, except for direct real-time performance capture from a MIDI keyboard, none has come up with a better scheme than just typing ABC into a really good editor such as GNU Emacs. If Finale could import an ABC file and understand all the features of ABC+, I might be using Finale a lot more.

      - Mark