Most of them post with some regularity at the abcusers group on Yahoo.
In my sample of threads, admittedly not too big, I encountered very few messages to the topic by JFM, and none by the authors of abc2midi and BarFly. I hope they are at least reading, and willing to comply to a new standard designed by CW and the other discussers. It did not work with ABC 2.0 though, so we must hope that they change their minds.
> The reasons why they didn't bother so far [to agree on interpretations of some basic ABC syntax] still escape me
Because creating a fully featured specification that is backwards compatible is incredibly difficult
I appreciate that; but again, the best standard is useless without programmers planning to implement it. In contrast, some minimal amount of communication between the major programmers would be easy, if they felt the need.
and different programs cater to different users with different needs.
That seems to be the real problem: each freeware programmer has his own ideas about winning the gratitude of a particular group of users. JFM, for instance, is an organist. Now those users who want to use abcm2ps and abc2midi, as frequently bundled, should insist on a higher degree of compatibility between the two than currently achieved. A while ago I wrote an email in French to JFM, who replied something like "Thanks for your bug report; will be fixed." —
For example, how do you write ABC for scordatura tunings that will print and play correctly?
I personally am more modest; see above for the requirements I believe to be sufficient for Mudcat purposes. The task is obviously still difficult enough, so that joint intellectual forces would be required. Do you really see this kind of cooperation, and predict its success in acceptable time?
Jack, if you refuse to read "abcusers", did you read the "proposals" on abcnotation.com, mentioned by Mick (06 May 13 - 01:19 PM)? What is your opinion? What strategies would you recommend to the ABC people and to Mudcat? BarFlyers may feel the need for a stable Mudcat standard more strongly than typical abcm2ps users. The same question goes to all ABC experts (which excludes myself, a grateful user of ...2abc and abc2... tools).