ABC Music Notation: Character Sets

Character Sets

The question of character sets has only partly been handled in ABC. The original abc2mtex program used TeX escape sequences to get more than the 7-bit ASCII character set. A lot of ABC programs accept many of these, at least the Western European (Latin-1) letters. This is done with the same sort of escape sequence.

Here is a list of escape sequences that are currently in use. Note that the final {} is required in TeX, but most ABC tools let you omit it, so you only need a backslash and the 1- or 2-char symbol.

TeX	ABC	char	Description
\"A{}	\"A	Ä	A-umlaut
\"a{}	\"a	ä	a-umlaut
\'A{}	\'A	Á	A-acute
\'a{}	\'a	á	a-acute
\`A{}	\`A	À	A-grave
\`a{}	\`a	à	a-grave
\^A{}	\^A	Â	A-circumflex
\"a{}	\"a	â	a-circumflex
\~A{}	\~A	Ã	A-tilde
\~a{}	\~a	ã	a-tilde
\AA{}	\AA	Å	A-ring
\aa{}	\aa	å	a-ring
\AE{}	\AE	Æ	AE-ligature
\ae{}	\ae	æ	ae-ligature

\,C{}	\,C	Ç	C-cedille
\,c{}	\,c	ç	c-cedille

\"E{}	\"E	Ë	E-umlaut
\"e{}	\"e	ë	e-umlaut
\'E{}	\'E	É	E-ecute
\'e{}	\'e	é	e-ecute
\`E{}	\`E	È	E-grave
\`e{}	\`e	è	e-grave
\^E{}	\^E	Ê	E-circumflex
\"e{}	\"e	ê	e-circumflex

\"I{}	\"I	Ï	I-umlaut
\"i{}	\"i	ï	i-umlaut
\'I{}	\'I	Í	I-icute
\'i{}	\'i	í	i-icute
\`I{}	\`I	Ì	I-grave
\`i{}	\`i	ì	i-grave
\^I{}	\^I	Î	I-circumflex
\"i{}	\"i	î	i-circumflex

\~N{}	\~N	Ñ	N-tilde
\~n{}	\~n	ñ	n-tilde

\"O{}	\"O	Ö	O-umlaut
\"o{}	\"o	ö	o-umlaut
\'O{}	\'O	Ó	O-ocute
\'o{}	\'o	ó	o-ocute
\`O{}	\`O	Ò	O-grave
\`o{}	\`o	ò	o-grave
\^O{}	\^O	Ô	O-circumflex
\"o{}	\"o	ô	o-circumflex

\O{}	\O	Ø	O-slash
\o{}	\o	ø	o-slash

\ss{}	\ss	ß	German sz-ligature

\"U{}	\"U	Ü	U-umlaut
\"u{}	\"u	ü	u-umlaut
\'U{}	\'U	Ú	U-ucute
\'u{}	\'u	ú	u-ucute
\`U{}	\`U	Ù	U-grave
\`u{}	\`u	ù	u-grave
\^U{}	\^U	Û	U-circumflex
\"u{}	\"u	û	u-circumflex

I don't have much information on which ABC programs actually implement all (or part) of this list. If you can document this for one program, send me a note saying what you've learned. Maybe I can put together a table of which program implement which characters.

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