W.E., I honestly think the ABC+ tools will be the most satisfactory solution for the tasks you describe. Add abc2tab to the tools Jon and I mentioned above, and you'll have everything you need. abc2tab specifically addresses dulcimer tabs. Spending money (a little or a lot) isn't going to buy you tools that do the job any better than these.

abc2tab is written in Perl. If you don't have Perl on your system, you can freely download it from perl.com for nearly any computer you may have.

Another popular ABC tab program is Christoph Dalitz's abctab2ps, a program that creates many kinds of tablature and outputs it to PostScript files for beautiful printing.

Frank Nordberg maintains a searchable database of ABC applications. There's also a comprehensive list of software at Chris Walshaw's homepage.

There is a ton of ABC information here on Mudcat as well and experts you can use as a resource while your honing your ABC skills.

Good luck,

      - Mark