PEDANT ALERT:
In actual tonic sol-fa, periods are part of a punctuation hierarchy that marks measures and time divisions within measures. Note durations are given indirectly, in reference to the measure divisions. When a note crosses an even division (as in the case of dotted or tied notes), the continuation is marked by a hyphen after the division marker. The sol-fa duration notation given by Joe (where periods act as length extenders) is an effective and not uncommon convention, but is non-standard and incapable of handling more complex timings (like the dotted rhythm in GUEST's tune).

With the division hierarchy running "| : . ," the standard sol-fa of GUEST's tune (translating from the ABC) would run something like this:

{|d.d,-r:m.d|r.T:d||
|m.m,-f:s.m|f.r:m||
|s,-f.m,-r:d,-T.L,-S|L.T:d|}

And Joe's tune would be written like this:

{|d.rd:T.d|r.T:d||
|m.fm:r.m|f.r:m||
|Dt.ls:fm.rd|s.s:d||

You can see that these are substantially different variants.


As for the ABC, an ABC reader requires additional header lines (at a minimum, to denote tune number, title, meter and key). So to plug it into a program such as the folkinfo.org online ABC Converter, you'd need something more like this:

GUEST's variant:
X:1
T:Man's life a vapour
M:4/4
L:1/8
K:G
G2 G>A B2G2|A2 F2 G4|B2 B>c d2 B2|c2 A2 B4|d>c B>A G>F E>D|E2 F2 G4||

Joe's variant:
X:2
T:Man's life a vapour
M:4/4
L:1/4
K:G
G A/G/ F G|A F G2|B c/B/ A B|c A B2|g/f/ e/d/ c/B/ A/G/|d d G2||