This is a not totally accurate script of the video which you'll find at https://colinhume.com/MP3/WEforABC.mp4

Hello, I'm Colin Hume and I want to explain how to use my WebEdit program to process ABC files.

First off, I didn't build it with that in mind.  I wrote it to process web pages.  Then I added code for programming languages that I use: Delphi, Classic ASP, PHP, and for rich text files, and various other kinds of file.  That means it's not an all-in-one package for ABC music, because some users won't be interested in that.  You have to download a few programs yourself, which may be more work, but has the advantage that if one of the ABC programs is updated you can download the latest version without waiting for me to create a new version of WebEdit.

So you go to the Downloads page of my website and install WebEdit, ignoring all the warning messages.  WebEdit shows a Help page which really does have lots of useful information, but let's close that - there's a link to it in the Help menu if you want to read it later.  You're now faced with a blank WebEdit screen because there are no open files.  I assume you have some ABC source somewhere, so let's open one of those files.  I've set up a folder called TestABC - you can put it in "Documents" if you wish but I don't.  So click File | Open.  I don't normally use a standard Windows Open dialogue, but I will just this once to reassure you with something familiar.  Click the first of the two icons.  Aah, that's better.  If it's in "Documents" you can see that in the left-hand column.  Mine is on my C-drive, and there's only one file in the TestABC folder, so click on the file name "Test.ABC".  But in future I suggest you try my Open routine which shows you files in the specified folder and any contained folders, and lets you filter on file names simply by typing a few letters.

WebEdit recognises a file as ABC format if it has an extension of .ABC or starts X: followed by a number.  You'll know if it's recognised because the current tune will be shown using colour syntax highlighting, which means it's easy to see the %% lines, the bar-lines and possibly other items.  If you click the "Sections" menu you'll see that there are three tunes in this file and you can jump to the one you want - that's useful with my main ABC file which has over a thousand tunes!  There's also now an "ABC" menu which we'll come to later.

I'm a great user of hot-keys (or accelerator keys as Microsoft now calls them) so many of the commonly-used menu items have a key associated with them.  If you click File | Validate | Validate file and notice that the hot key is function key F10 you can save yourself time by just pressing that in future - though some keyboards hide the original use of these keys and you have to hold down Fn to use them as intended.

My files have been through this process already, so you just see the "Validated" message at the bottom, but yours may come up with error messages.  Some of these are errors which the ABC programs would tell you about later.  Some are just my own fussy opinion about how ABC source should be laid out.  Often the error message will have a "Help" button (or you can press function key F1) and often you can change the Validation options to suppress this particular check.  But I suggest you don't do that blindly.  I've thought hard about validation rules.  On the other hand if you have a hundred tunes and they all break a particular rule of mine, I quite understand if you switch that check off!

When you save the file it automatically validates the current tune if the file has been modified, so you may want to switch off Validation | Validate on Save.  By the way, while we're on the menu, you can press F1 to see help on the current menu item.  I use this quite a lot - and I wrote WebEdit but that doesn't mean I remember everything it does!

The validation will also reformat the ABC - again it has no effect on my file because it's been through this before, but WebEdit tries to rationalise the layout.

Now you want to see the generated musical notation or play the tune - probably both.  So you need to download a few free programs.  Once again the Help system is here for you.  The second entry in the ABC menu is "ABC programs".  Double-click the sourceforge link.  Woh, there's a lot of stuff here.  Let's go back and double-click the next link which is to a zip file.  You need the first three of these, and if you ever want to convert a MIDI file to ABC notation - which I don't recommend - you also need midi2abc.exe.  As the Help page says, copy these to a folder on your C: drive called "ABC" - no, it doesn't have to go under "Documents" - I wrote all this before Microsoft came up with "My Documents" and it works just fine.

You also need the GhostScript system - again there's a link in the Help page.  This is a replacement for PostScript.  The program abcm2ps converts your ABC to a PostScript file and then GhostScript converts that to PDF format.  I've copied the GhostScript files to my ABC folder, but you can just use the folder chosen by the installation routine.  You can specify a program to display the PDF - I normally use a free program called SumatraPDF, but out of the box WebEdit will use whatever default your system has for displaying PDFs, for instance your browser.

To check that all this has been done, click on ABC | Version info.

All right, let's check it out.  I always use the hot keys, but you can see under ABC |Play/Print/Create a whole list of possibilities including Play F4 and Show score F2 - let's see the score first.

And now F4 to play the tune.  WebEdit has an internal MIDI Player - if you don't like that just switch off ABC | Settings | Internal player.  But give it a chance first!  You can play, pause, stop, and you can click anywhere in the slider to play from that point.  You can drag the whole panel up or down.  I may add the option to specify a section of the tune and play that repeatedly.

All right, that's the basics.  I wouldn't blame you if you stop the video at this point, close WebEdit and have a complete rest.  Next time you open WebEdit it will be positioned where you left off, and you can use File | Open tab to edit another ABC file if you like.

Ready for some more?  Let's download some ABC and do things with it.

I'll go to https://abcnotation.com/tunes and search for "42-pound cheque" - actually fust "42-pound" will do.  Let's take the first one, which is from John Chambers - probably the most prolific supplier of ABC tunes to the web.  Go to the tune page and Download ABC.  My system is set up so that we see it in WebEdit but yours won't be, so let's copy and paste it into my Test.abc file.

It says the tune uses broken rhythm, but actually it doesn't - it's those angle brackets on the last line fooling WebEdit, so say No to that - just press Esc.  Now F10 to validate it.

It says there's no tempo specified, so we'll let WebEdit choose one - we can always change it later.

Now we hit one of my fussy messages - it's valid ABC but I know from experience that it usually isn't what I meant.  But the cursor is in the middle of a line, and the line does end correctly.  What does that mean?  It means WebEdit has partially reformatted the source and it's confused about where the error actually is.  So press F10 again.  This time it gets the position right - the line ends with a double colon meaning end of one repeat and start of another.  That's not something I use - I'd rather see "end of repeat" on one line and "start of repeat" on the next line, so let's do that.  And I can see troubles ahead on the next two lines, so I'll rearrange them.  F10 again, and we see that WebEdit has put spaces around the bar-lines to make the whole thing more readable (in my opinion).

So let's play it.  We get two error messages from ABC2MIDI:
Error in line-char 66-41 : Field not allowed in tune body
Warning in line-char 62-10 : Track 0 Bar 0 has 15/2 time units while the time signature has 4 in repeat

So stop playing and double-click on the first message to position to the offending line.  It's the very last line - either delete it or move it up before the notes - I'll delete it.

The second message is talking about something wrong in the repeat.  It's probably easier to see this in the musical notation, so press F2 to view that.  The last bar of the A-music is incomplete because the B-music starts with an upbeat - but the A-music doesn't.  Let's give first and second time bars.  And it's far too slow, because there really should be two beats in the bar not four, so I'll change the time-signature and the tempo.  Let's try that.  Still an error message - we need to put a double bar line at the end of A2.

OK, now a few chords - I'll just do the A-music.

Now let's position just before the key signature and try out some instruments.  Click ABC | MIDI programs.  Let's try Violin for melody.  OK, save that.  Pizzicato Strings for accompaniment?  No, not strong enough - how about Banjo?  Save that.  And for Bass we can rapidly go through several before settling on Acoustic Bass.  Of course we can position to any of these later and change them.

And then we can click on ABC | Accompaniment and try all sorts of rhythms before deciding  to stick with the standard one!  But if you have a triple-time tune you might well like to go through my suggestions and see if you find one you like.  Let's try the tune "Agatha" with various accompaniments.  These are just my suggestions - it's a quick way of trying out various possibilities and then you can choose one and modify the gchord string directly if you wish.

There's so much else I could tell you, but it might scare you off rather than impress you.  There's a lot of functionality here, almost all things that I've found useful.  So go ahead and experiment, and let me know if you find a problem or want to make a suggestion to improve it.  Thanks for watching.