ABC Music Notation: History

by John Chambers
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This chapter documents some of the known history of the ABC music notation and its software. If you know of any significant events (especially software releases and creation of new web sites), please let me know.

1993
December 8
Version 1.0 of abc2mtex, a translator from ABC to MusicTex notation.
1994
Jan 10
Version 1.1 of abc2mtex.
May
Version 1.2 of abc2mtex.
1995
January
Version 1.3 of abc2mtex.
March
Version 1.4 of abc2mtex.
September
Jim Vint's abc2win version ___ announced for Windows 3.?.
October
Version 1.5 of abc2mtex.
1996
October
Version 1.6 of abc2mtex.
February
First public version of abc2ps, a program that converts ABC directly to PostScript. It is a C program that runs on Unix systems. W95 and Mac versions eventually appear. [When?]
July
Brenda Holloway wrote an ABC interpreter for the Magic Cap operating system; it played ABC tunes through its built-in MIDI synthesizer. It was written up in two issues of Handheld Systems Journal, but died with the demise of its platform. Here is an article about it.
October
First public version of abc4mac, a Macintosh program that combined abc2ps and abcMIDI.
November
First use of w: for words beneath the notes, in abc2ps.
1997
January
Version 1.6.1 of abc2mtex. This may have been the version used to write the first ABC syntax standard, first as a narrative description, and then in BNF format by Henrik Norbeck.
March
First public release of BarFly, an ABC editor and player for the Macintosh.
March 31
First beta release of abcmus, an ABC editor and player that runs on Windows 3.1/3.11, Windows 95, and Windows NT 4.0.
May 10
First public release of abcmus.
June
First public release of Muse, a full-scale shareware music editor from Laurie Griffiths that speaks abc. It can print, play, handle several harmony parts and create guitar tablature. It runs under Windows 95 or Windows NT.
1998
March 3
Jean-Francois Moine's abcm2ps (multi-staff and multi-voice) variant of abc2ps was first announced. This was a version with multiple staffs and multiple voices.
March
Last-known message on ABC developers list. Everyone seems to agree that developers and users should all talk together, and the message traffic isn't large enough to justify two lists.
May 12
Michael Methfessel released abc2ps version 1.3.0, the first version with multiple voices.
1999
April
Chris Walshaw announced that he was ready to write a new version of the ABC standard, triggering a lot of abcusers list activity to get agreement on the exact form of various extensions.
Nov
Paul Schwartz's ABC Convert-A-Matic is a web page with a that accepts ABC and produces staff notation, either as JPEG, PDF or MIDI. It also has on-line documentation.
2000
January 1
All ABC software passes into the new millenium without any Y2K problems at all, because music is timeless! (Actually, there was a bit of discussion on several mailing lists, and after several months, nobody has reported an ABC program with a Y2K problem.)
January
Dave Holland announced a preliminary version of an ABC viewer for the Palm Pilot. Some time later, it moved to Dave Holland's ABC page.
Feb
abctab2ps is a program for typesetting music and (lute) tablature.
May
Skink, a java ABC tool written by Wil Macaulay, was announced.
May 26
The sourceforge ABC project was established, to provide a common Open-Source repository for ABC software.
June
Pointer to tabledit program for guitar tablature posted to abcusers. [When I find out the actual date for this, I'll move this entry.]
2001
February
Bryan Creer announced ABC2NWC, a translator between ABC and NoteWorthy Composer file format.
February
Christoph Dalitz announced a Macintosh version of abctab2ps, built by Hank Heijink.
June
Steve Spencer-Jowett announced PalmABC, an ABC editor and player for PalmOS.
September
Guido Gonzato announced his ABC pre-processor, which does a number of useful transformations of ABC files, including translations between various dialects.
2002
March
Matthew Junker's http://my.execpc.com/~mjunker/abc-mode.el "abc-mode" emacs macros for editing abc.
May
Richard Robinson's abc tune comparison program first appeared. This is a tool that tries to measure the similarity of tunes.
2002
July
Bryan Creer's Abacus 1.0.0 announced. Abacus is an abc editor/player/printer programme for Windows.
2003
April
Mike Casey announced FIDDLEABC, an abc program for Windows that displays fiddle or banjo fingerboards while it plays the notes.
2003
July
Guido Gonzato announced ABC Current Practices, which documents the ABC features and extensions that are implemented in several of the most popular current ABC programs.
2004
May
___
2005
May
___
2005
Dec
ABC Navigator
is a new (and free) Windows program that is an ABC program. It handles editing, playing and printing the music.

If you know of any significant ABC events not listed here, please let me know.


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Copyright 2001, 2002 by John Chambers