Trying to import abc-files into the latest Mac-version of BiaB leads to a crash or nothing happens. I tried some abc-files. Always the same frustrating result. Has anyone the same or a better experience?

Not enough info.

What app generated these files and what is the suffix?

I don't know which program created the files. They were downloaded from the internet. The suffix was abc. But importing abc-files into Biab should be independent from the creation. The abc-format is defined.

Hi Wbe,

We received the file you sent, Band-in-a-Box crashed when I opened it as well. I don't know ABC notation well enough to figure out what's different about this file compared to other ones I can open successfully, but I'm sending it to the development team now for further testing.

Thanks
Kent
PG Music

Defined? Oh dear no. Like many amateur formats, ABC is a clown car with only the loosest of standards and no organization or governing body to maintain them. Any definitions are merely suggestions.

Simple? Yes, Free? Absolutely. A mess? Yep, that too. Since there's no established commercial application, there's nothing for anyone else to conform to.
ABC Notation

As the above web site freely admits:

There is now a vast array of software (mostly freeware or shareware) which can read or edit abc. It is almost impossible to maintain a list of what software has which functionality on each platform but the following tables may help (N.B. the entries are based on what software developers say about their own programs rather than independent testing).

I'm not interested in an argument. Frankly, I couldn't care less about ABC and find notation much easier to read. I do know about standards, definitions and inter-application compatibility.

I am only the messenger.

With the above in mind, it would be nice if PG Music will post which ABC apps they find compatible with BIAB. That way, you can see if your random internet downloads are compatible with any of those and you can use one as a translator. If none are, that will tell you something as well.

^
fully agree

and as you know the Mac 2018 upgrade manual only tells us

" Support for ABC Notation Format
ABC notation is the simple text-based notation system used by musicians worldwide to store chords, melody, and lyrics of songs. Now you can open and save songs in ABC notation format. You can find out more information about the songs and ABC notation at abcnotation.com. "

not much help from PG's manual and also why PG introduced this into their programme makes no sense to me and i have yet to find those " musicians worldwide " that use the ABC Notation Format to exchange files

There are a lot of abc-files in the web especially with folkmusic, so a big source of music. It would be great, if BiB could import them. Perhaps PG does some research what kind of abc-files exist und make their app compatible with most of them. At the moment its a quite useless feature.

You’re still assuming that there’s a standard and all that PGM has to do is conform. There isn’t the way most open source freeware works.

PG Music should list the App(s) with which its ABC files are compatible. To expect it to conform with anything just because there’s a .abc suffix ... that’s an unrealistic expectation. There is no real standard.

I just read in Wikipedia that abc-format is a standard develloped by Chris Walshaw and the actual version is 2.1. By the way: there are a lot of programs, which can read this format (e.g. Musescore with an ABC-plugin) . So, I can´t believe that it is impossible to do it.
A list of programs , which are compatible with BiB published from PG would be no big help, if have downloaded the files from the web. How shall I know, which program has created it?

None of that has anything to do with the fact that you cannot make random files downloaded from the internet open in BIAB. As you have acknowledged, you don't know who created them nor with what.

Just because you know who originally developed ABC doesn't mean that anyone else gave their app the same functionality.

Have you tried opening them in MuseScore?

Hi,

The file does import into Musescore, but when played back there, it seemed like there might be some missing notes so there could be something funny with how the body is formatted.

Like you mentioned, ABC implementation varies pretty widely between applications, so it may take a while before every single version of the ABC format works perfectly with BIAB.

Cheers
Kent
PG Music