Michael Reid

Tom, I was vaguely familiar with the notion of alternative tuning systems but unfamiliar with the term "meantone tuning" until I found this interesting set of web pages: Musical Tuning and Temperaments It includes a "musical calculator" that shows vividly how much various tuning systems deviate from the theoretical ideal. (The text says the calculator also generates tones so you can hear the differences, but so far I can't get this to work on my Mac.)

I don't think so, Jeff, though some abc packages might offer this as an extension to the standard. There's nothing I see in the abc 1.6 standard that provides for "da capo" and similar directions and symbols. Barfly, the abc package for the Mac, offers user-definable symbols that are extensions to standard abc. The "segno" (sign) symbol is among the default extensions, according to the documentation; you insert it like an ornament. But I've never tried using that or any other user-defined symbols. Further, even if you get the "segno" in the right place, I don't know how you'd go about writing the directive to the player ("D.C. al <segno>," if I remember correctly). The abc 1.6 standard does provide commands to indicate the parts of a tune and the order in which they're played. So, suppose you have a tune which is played ABCB. You can insert P:ABCB in the header of the tune, and P:A before the A part, P:B before the B part, etc. I tried this out in Barfly and it does work -- but only to the extent that it plays the tune parts in the correct order when you use Barfly's audio playback. It doesn't display any indication of the parts in the sheet music, which I imagine is your objective. If you're willing to sacrifice professional-looking notation, I think you can provide a workable directive to the player by inserting a line such as "Play ABCB" in various nonstandard, workaround ways. You could write that phrase in a part line (P:), as a "chord" at the beginning of the A part, or in any of the header fields that display when you print from whatever package you're using.

That's what "null vote" means -- if you click that button, you're essentially abstaining. Evidently this is by design: If you peek at the results first, you forfeit your vote. As I recall, this was made more-or-less clear in some additional wording that appeared on the same screen as the "View results (null vote)" button.

The context of quips is clear if you quote the message to which you're replying. For example, if your message had included this quote from Rich: there would be no confusion. As I've done in this message, you can add quoted passages from multiple messages (though the process is a bit tedious) using the Quote button on the screen where you write your message.

Odd ... I don't see any problems with the clock settings. My Controls | Board Settings has a drop-down list to select your time zone, plus an adjustment checkbox for daylight savings time. I set those to Mountain Daylight Time. My posts show the correct time, as does my user's profile.

Bummer David, it looks like a bit of tweaking with the spacing of the top line should fix the sig. I am finding the "view new posts" feature problematic. I visited the forum about an hour ago, and "find new posts" correctly located the 11 new posts since my previous visit. Having left the site and now returned, it's still telling me that those 11 posts are new ... however, the icons within the thread listings to jump to new posts are gone. Michael Reid