Dear fellow typesetters.

Occasionally I give "competitors" to the excellent MusiXTeX typesetting 
tools a try. This time I've been playing with "Abc" the notational 
syntax of which was, as far as I understand, among the ideas behind Dirk 
Laurie's M-Tx.

The "Abc" homepage, http://staffweb.cms.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/ lists 
quite a few "Abc" implementations and related utilities. Among them is 
the "ABC Plus Project", http://abcplus.sourceforge.net/, which comprises 
ao. a preprocessor, "abcpp" primarily dedicated to Abc typesetting 
sources. This afternoon I've typeset one of Michael Praetorius's setting 
of the X-mas Hymn "Puer natus in Bethlehem / Ein Kinf geborn zu 
Bethelehem" and uploaded score and source file to the Icking Archive. 
The Abc typesetting source is based on being preprocessed with abcpp 
before generating postscript- and MIDI output with abcm2ps and abc2midi. 
The curious among you might have a look:-) All needed software can be 
downloaded as binary- and source distributions from the "ABC Plus" site 
where you'll also find comprehensive documentation.

The preprocessor "abcpp" is of special interest to MusiXTeX typesetters, 
because its macro- and conditional output directives of  preprocessor 
can be used with any text file, including for example PMX- and M-Tx 
source files. An obvious use would be differing code for sheet music and 
MIDI. Take as an example the below excerpts from my M-Tx typesetting of 
  a madrigal, "Movi il tuo plettro Apollo" by Marcello Tosone 
(http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer/Tosone.html). For this 
description of abcpp facilities please imagine in abcpp input file 
"movi.mtp"

...
%% h260m
%% Abr B
#ifndef MIDI
% -1
\Sn\MyNq\ d8+ zd- ||
\Sn\MyNq\ a8 zg- ||
\Sn\MyNq\ f8 zd- ||
\Sn\MyNq\ X-1 b8 zg- // \Sn\MyPNq{1.85}{1}\ X2.5S fs8-- ||

#endif
% 1
#ifdef MIDI
%% Ig10t200i54:54:54:54:T-0-12-0-0
#endif
m4/4/0/0 rp |
m4/4/0/0 rp |
m4/4/0/0 @+1 d2+ c4 a |
L: Mo-v'il tuo
m4/4/0/0 @-6 d2+ e4 fs |
L: Mo-v'il tuo
...

The musixtex macros \Sn, \MyNq and \MyPNq are defined in an \input file 
referenced at the top of the M-Tx source file. The directive "#ifndef 
MIDI" causes abcpp to skip the lines between "#ifndef MIDI" and "#endif" 
if abcpp is launched with the command line

abcpp -MIDI movi.mtp movi.mtx

This line causes a macro "MIDI" to become the status "defined" at abcpp 
runtime (you could use any macro name, say DONALD_DUCK). The meaning of 
"#ifndef MIDI" is "if the macro MIDI has not been defined". Hence the 
lines enclosed within "#ifndef MIDI" and "#endif" will be skipped when 
abcpp outputs the file movi.mtx. Contrarily the lines enclosed within 
"#ifdef MIDI" and "#endif" will only be output to movi.mtx if ancpp is 
launched with the above command line. "#ifdef MIDI" means "if the macro 
MIDI has been defined"

Somewhere in the middle of the madrigal I've typeset some auxiliary 
notes which I definitely don't want to have reflected in the MIDI 
output. This could be accomplished by saying

...
% 14
%%\\\def\MyNote{\loffset{1}{\zcharnote{-17}{\eightrm *) Small notes: 
recorders}}}\
%
d2 b8 a (t g4 |
L: de, che gi{\`a} fu
a2 g |
L: ver-de,
U: @-2 ~~*)
#ifndef MIDI
au2+ du4- d8+ c // \Sn\ X.75S fu2s+0-1 \Nn\ r2b |
#else
au2+ du4- d8+ c |
#endif
L: lau-ro che gi{\`a}
U: @-2 ~~*)
#ifndef MIDI
\MyNote\ fs2u [u g8 a b c ] // \Sn\ X-.25S d2u+ \Nn\ r2b |
#else
fs2 g8 a b c |
#endif
L: ver-de
...

Besides conditional output abcpp also support macro definition 
directives, for example

#ifdef MIDI
#define METER "m4/4/0/6"
#define START_OCTAVES "4 3 4 2"
#else
#define METER "m1/8/0/6"
#define START_OCTAVES "4 4 5 3"
#endif

that sets up initial meter and octaves depending on output type. For the 
MIDI output I want to skip the leading "pseudo bar", the function of 
which is only to display voice ranges.

I have added a complete abcpp source file, movi.mtp to the source 
typesetting distribution 
(http://icking-music-archive.org/scores/tosone/movi.zip) accompanying my 
madrigal score.

Best regards
-- 
Christian Mondrup, Sheet Note Editor
Werner Icking Music Archive
http://icking-music-archive.org/
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