I didn't really mean that, griska.

When I started with folkinfo for example, the only standard was 1.6. There was the draft 1.7x. Lyrics and other bits were implemented by programs but handled differently.

One debate we had at folkinfo was whether to use abcm2ps which seemed to be the way abc was heading or whether to use abc2ps to ensure any of our postscript output would match the output used at the well known and very well established concertina.net, feeling that we as the new site would undoubtedly be thought wrong where differences such as word alignment occurred.

We opted to stick with abcm2ps and some time later, got in contact with Paul at concertina.net. He kindly switched his over to use abcm2ps so both have used the "defacto standard" for some time now.

That and a general "will our abc work properly with program x" and not having an official standard to refer to, are things I think as an attempted provider of abc conversions and text files to others are things I think one would prefer to be without.