Why I like ABC?

- It is an open and transparent format, readable by human beings and
several pieces of software;

- It is simple, compact, and easy to learn;

- ABC can be written in the body of e-mail messages;

- I can combine hundreds of tunes in a single file and recombine them as
wish with ABC tools;

- There are very good free (libre) software for ABC (I don't use
proprietary software);

- ABC programs are very small and fast;

- abcm2ps does pretty nice scores, usually without need of any manual
adjustings;

- Additional elements like annotations, guitar chords, grace notes, ties
and slurs are associated to notes, bars, rests or spaces -- that way,
they are correctly placed even when the layout is changed (unlike many
GUI-based programs).

- abcm2ps allows a lot of customisation and control of the output;

- I can write extensions to abcm2ps for complex and uncommon notation
(tablatures, special staves, special note heads, instrument-specific
notation, microtonalism, polimetrical/politonal music, etc.);

- abc2midi and abcm2ps can do many interesting things, like microtonal
music (in a way that is not supported by nearly any other music
software) and harmonic/rhythmic accompainment;

- There are ABC programs for any plataforms and OSes (PC, Mac, Palm,
pencil and paper...);

- I can use ABC to obtain PDF and MIDI in the web, without installing
any specific program;

- I can edit my music with virtually any text editor;

- There are very good text editors for ABC (jed, emacs, vi, flabc...);

- Several ABC programs run via command line, my preferred way to do most
tasks with a computer;

- Command-line ABC programs can be used in bash scripts and makefiles,
for automatic tasks (combining/transposing parts and pieces, compiling
songbooks, preprocessing, etc.);

- There are programs with graphical interface which support ABC;

- I can use abcm2ps to prepare complex documents with musical examples,
text, figures, etc. (I use it even for non-musical documents);

- I can insert ABC directly inside LaTeX documents (abc.sty, available
from CTAN);

- Being a text-based notation, ABC is very suitable for computer-aided
composition/analysis;

- There are numberous pieces of (traditional) music in ABC format around
the net;

- ABC is fun to use.


I use (mainly) abcm2ps, abc2midi, emacs with abc-mode by Matthew K.
Junker, abctool, microabc, tkabc and runabc, on a Debian GNU+Linux OS.

I have written microabc, abcm2ps Portuguese documentation, abcm2ps
extensions, tkabc interface translation, as well as a lot of mail
messages to Jef Moine and Seymour Shlien regarding to feature requests,
suggestions, comments and bug reports.

Cheers,
Hudson