MMario -

We have quite a few people here who can sight read ABC, but that's NOT GENERALLY TRUE for an unknown audience. As I noted, it depends on your audience, so some market research is needed.

For general use, midi is an automatic result of scoring for print, and it takes some extra conversion to get ABC. MIDI is about as close as one can come to a universal format, and in fact in "other cultures" there are some people who can "read" a mid file just about as easily as you read ABC.

While there are programs that will "print a score" from an ABC file, they're NOT GENERALLY PUBLISHER QUALITY scores without significant "tweaking."

It is apparently no longer true that "the right ABC programs" are easily, consistently, and permanently available for new users, according to many people who've had to ask where to find them recently. (Most people here are still using the Mid2ABC program that embeds a broken link to a site that doesn't work in the ABC result. The "working" site seems to have changed several times since I did my last downloads.)

ABC files aren't really significantly smaller than simple midi, with "modern" storage and bandwidth. Either format requires software to get a "useful" other format. ABC requires specific software while for midi there are numerous programs, that lots of people probably already have, for the same kinds of conversions.

It all depends on who your audience is going to be.

ABC used to be the only way to post a tune, and at mudcat it still is, so we have a lot of experienced users. Others don't, or at least may not, have our unique skills.

John