Neil, I haven't followed the developing standard as closely as you probably have but my impression is that the new standard is intended to be a textual encoding of what ABC+ (abcm2ps) already does. For my purposes, whatever abcm2ps does (or means to do) is correct and any other behavior is wrong. That doesn't mean alternate behaviors aren't good ideas, just not what I regard as faithful to the standard.

My sense is that the worldwide community of ABC users is generally moving toward the same position I've adopted.

      - Mark