| Basic Info | |
|---|---|
| Media Type | text |
| subtype | vnd.abc |
| Registered? | Yes |
| See also | Allen |
| Extensions | |
Tags: (none)
File Formats: (none)
From [email protected] Sun Sep 7 13:26:30 1997 Subject: Registration of MIME media type text/vnd.abc To: [email protected] MIME media type name: text MIME subtype name: vnd.abc Required parameters: [none] Optional parameters: version, charset Encoding considerations: The ABC language was designed to transmit folk melodies via e-mail, and the majority of ABC files are 7-bit ASCII. The encoding of non-ASCII characters is currently based on TeX. It is expected that some files may use 8-bit ISO-8859-x character encodings for material in text fields (e.g., comments, titles, proper names) which are not essential to the interpretation of the music. In the unlikely case of ABC files with very long lines the "quoted-printable" encoding can be used during transmission. Security considerations: There are no significant security issues associated with ABC. The language contains no facilities for access to files or network resources. ABC files may be interpreted by applications which can produce images, printable files, and/or audio output. These applications may make use of system resources in ways common to all other applications. Interoperability considerations: Most ABC files can be interpreted by all ABC applications. Some ABC files contain experimental features which are not part of the published standard. The ABC developers maintain an e-mail list where strategies for minimizing evolutionary differences are discussed. Published specification: A complete description of the ABC language is available at <URL: http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/ > Most of this information is mirrored at <URL: http://celtic.stanford.edu/pub/tunes/abc2mtex/ > A BNF description in the format described by RFC 822 is at <URL: http://home1.swipnet.se/~w-11382/abcbnf.htm > Applications which use this media type: As of 1997 there are more than a dozen applications which interpret ABC files. All common computing platforms are supported. A complete list of applications is at <URL: http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/ > Additional information: Magic number(s): "%abc" It is strongly recommended that abc files should begin with this string. An optional version string may follow these first 4 characters on the first line. File extension(s): ".abc" It is recommended that abc file names should use this extension. (Many HTTP servers use the file extension as an indicator of MIME type.) The ABC language uses the '<' and '>' characters. Raw ABC must not be embedded into HTML files, and the file extension ".html" must be avoided. Macintosh File Type Code(s): TEXT Person & email address to contact for further information: Steve Allen <[email protected]> Chris Walshaw <[email protected]> Henrik Norbeck <[email protected]> Intended usage: COMMON Author/Change controller: Steve Allen <[email protected]> acting on behalf of the ABC developers The ABC musical notation language was developed by Chris Walshaw. ABC files consist of human-readable notation for musical score. ABC files have been interchanged via e-mail and WWW since 1991. As of 1997 there are nearly 10000 ABC tunes on the WWW. Early use of ABC was largely for typesetting folk melodies from the British Isles. This quickly broadened to include folk melodies from many Western cultures, and applications capable of performing audio playback came into existence. Subsequent evolution of ABC has permitted the notation of multiple parts, Eastern musical scales, and folk dance. Further evolution of the language capabilities is expected. The developers strongly favor the idea that the notation should be simple enough for sight-reading from the ASCII text. There are two e-mail lists which discuss ABC. The developers list discusses implementation strategies for new language features; contact one of the persons listed above for more information. The ABC User Group Mailing List discusses usage of the existing applications; it is described at <URL: http://diana.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~jra/abc-users/ > -- Steve Allen UCO/Lick Observatory Santa Cruz, CA 95064 [email protected] Voice: +1 408 459 3046 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla