That does not sound too good, Mick. I only learned about ABC on Mudcat, and find it very handy for communicating little tunes here, also of more than one voice. To be honest, I rarely type ABC directly, due to my laziness lack of knowledge, but I generate it by software from WYSIWYG programs (see above). I appreciate being able to post those tunes directly as text, so that readers can quickly get a first impression and decide whether they want to paste the snippet into their ABC software. For the same reasons I have recently takean up the habit to send ABC text by email to my friends, instead of attaching MuicXML files.

For example, there was a Mudcat thread about harmonizing old modal songs, where short ABC illustrations were much more helpful than lengthy explanations.

From the somewhat meagre documentation of abcm2ps I had the impression that it never bothered about the 2.0 specification but is quite committed to 2.1. Maybe the developer, Jean-François Moine, secretly took the lead (- he is from Brittany, that says it all ;-)).

Artful, what features of 2.0 are you missing? And which software implements them, or used to (so you can "stick to" it)?

For my personal current needs, I do not think I need any of the "volatile" features. (As a mere interchange format for scores, MusicXML is the better choice anyway.) Nevertheless, I would appreciate a good ABC standard supported by software for all platforms. Mick, do you think there is still a chance, either led by Chris Walshaw or by Jean-François Moine?