The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #124451   Message #2748858
Posted By: Chris Partington
20-Oct-09 - 02:37 PM
Thread Name: A really useful program for ABC format
Subject: RE: A really useful program for ABC format
Openmike, don't worry that Ghostscript might do something to harm your computer, it won't. It's one of the essential bits of the jigsaw that makes abcm2ps, one of the central parts of the ABCexplorer download, work. Without it the whole program is like a car with no engine.

Just take a deep breath and let it download the whole thing. As long as you choose the appropriate options it will update itself automatically every now and then, to fix any bugs as they are reported, and to insert updated versions of e.g. abcm2ps.

For a manual on all the sophisticated things that you can do with ABCplus, but starting with a very clear basic tutorial go to
http://abcplus.sourceforge.net/
and download the abcplus en.1.1.0 zip file.

There is a good help file on board ABCexplorer to help you round the program's learning curve.

ABC is pretty much the de facto standard for moving traditional music round the web, and really is quite simple to grasp so long as you understand music. And you don't even need that much knowledge if all you need is to download a tune and listen to it. There are even apps using it on ipods now, so it's worth making the effort to familiarise yourself with it.