(FROM dick greenhaus)

Several folks have asked me to post an explanation. Here 'tis:

This is by way of an explanation as to why the update to DigiTrad is taking so damn long. It's not any sort of excuse--I fail to see why a delay in the publication of a freely shared collection calls for any excuse whatsoever.

A few years back, DigiTrad was a full-text-searchable database that was put together (and issued) in a DOS- based format called AskSam, and used a music-playing program based on SongWright that played the tunes on the computers' speakers. The only real problem (for me) was entering songs and melodies, and the database had some notably good features: It located words, phrases, and words within a specified proximity of each other; the music-playing program didn't produce elegant sounds (actually, it sounded something like a constipated melodeon), but it played the tunes on PCs that didn't have sound cards and it displayed the words synchronously with the notes played.

When DigiTrad was first put up on the Mudcat, we originally used a Windows version of AskSam. Like most Windows applications, it was fairly slick, but didn't work as well as the earlier DOS version. It also required me to convert the tunes into MIDI format, which didn't allow for synchronizing words and music. This took additional time and left me with two versions of the tunes--a MIDI for the website, and Songwright for the people who downloaded or paid for disks. I refuse to give up the "follow the bouncing ball" feature completely. Though this system worked, it was a nuisance and it wasn't the fastest search engine around, and pretty soon the increased traffic on Mudcat caused traffic jams. Max instituted a new search engine which was faster, though even a bit more limited in the types of searches it would support. The new search required me to produce an HTML version of DigiTrad, in addition to the more compact and (IMO) better-performing one on the downloaded DOS version. It also demanded more time on my part. About this time, a helpful Macintosh programmer named Mark Heiman graciously volunteered to provide a Mac version of DigiTrad. This worked well until Mac changed its operating system, which caused the whole business to crash. A fixed Mac version appeared a year ago, for download.The Mac version has a couple of neat features: since Macs come with sound cards, you can pick the instrument you want the tune to be played upon. Even nicer, the program displays the score, lets you print it, and has synchronizing capabilities. The search is mouse driven, and doesn't support Boolean (NOT, IF, AND and OR) searches, but on the whole it's a slick package. Mr. Heiman also wrote a Windows equivalent to the Mac version which enabled me to distribute a single CDROM with both the Windows and the Mac version on it. All was well--except that Microsoft updated their operating system. Guess what no longer worked. At the moment, several things are happening (or not happening, depending on how you look at this.) The Digital Traditions forthcoming edition has about a thousand added lyrics, with a bit under 50% of them having tunes. Many errors, glitches, mis-attributions, duplications and typos have been corrected. It's still in the DOS AskSam format, which is the simplest, most convenient one for me to use. Mark Heiman, who has a full-time job as well as several time-consuming projects--he's coming out with the first new edition of Child in a quarter-century--is working on de-bugging the Windows and Mac versions. Since I'd like all the new versions to come out at the same time, I'm holding of on the teejus job of converting my files to HTML until the downloadable disks are ready. Many people have submitted songs for DigiTrad. Some are even in a usable format, and are not duplicates of what we have. Same goes for tunes. That's not where the hang-up is, though---and if anyone wants to take on the chore of converting SongWright Files to MIDI, I'd be glad to send him or her the files (along with software to do this with). I know of no volunteered labor that has been ignored; if such there be, I apologize.