abc2svg/abcm2ps common value types

boolean

It may be:

• 'true', 'yes', '1' or (empty)
• 'false', 'no' or '0'

Only the first character is checked.

dir

It is a direction or a relative position.

• 'auto'
• 'above' or 'up'
• 'below', 'under' or 'down'
• 'hidden' or 'opposite'

int

It is a whole number, usually positive.

encoding

This value is used by abcm2ps only, and when the output is PostScript without the help of pango.
It may be either 'native' or any other string in which case 'utf-8' is assumed (default value).
When the encoding is not 'native', the utf-8 characters are replaced by the name of their glyphs as they appear in the font files. This is done thanks to an internal table which contains the ASCII and most Latin characters.
This table may be extended by the command %%glyph to handle more characters (see the addition of '…' - ellipsis - in the file sample.abc of the abcm2ps package).

float

It is a number which may have a decimal point number (eg. 0.5).

(fonts)

The fonts are declared by:

	%%xxxfont font [encoding] size [optional parameters]

font and size may be specified as '*' (asterisk), in which case their values remain unchanged.
encoding is used by abcm2ps only. When omitted, its value is 'utf-8' for the first declaration of the font or stay unchanged.
Examples:

%%vocalfont Arial 12		% Arial utf-8 12pt
%%vocalfont Times-Roman		% Times-Roman utf-8 12pt
%%vocalfont * 13		% Times-Roman utf-8 13pt
%%vocalfont UKaiCN-UTF8-H native % UKaiCN-UTF8-H native 13pt

See %%xxxfont for more information.

regular expression

Information about the regular expressions may be found in

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Regular_Expressions

abcm2ps uses the regex functions of the C library.
abc2svg uses the Javascript regular expressions.

Examples:

- transpose up by two semitones all the voices the names of which contain the characters "Bb":

abcm2ps tune1.abc --voice Bb --transpose 2 --voice end

- display only the 2 first measures of the tunes the titles of which start with "Gloria":

abcm2ps tune2.abc --tune 'T:Gloria' --clip -3 --tune end

(note: "-3" means "include the bar starting the measure 3")

size

It is used in font definitions. It is expressed in pixels (there are 96 pixels per inch - see unit below).

symbol_selection

The symbol_selection used in %%break and %%clip permits the localisation of a music symbol (note, rest or bar - only). It has the following format:

measure_number [":" time_numerator "/" time_denominator]

measure_number is the measure number as it is displayed with %%measurenb 1 or -j1.
Note that this number may change when changing the %%contbarnb value. In the case %%contbarnb is not set, the repeat sequences may be identified by a letter after the measure number as "10b" (second repeat sequence).
time_numerator and time_denominator define the fraction of a whole note which gives the time offset of the symbol in the selected measure.
The numerator is numbered starting from 0. The value 0 (default) selects the measure bar. To select the first note of a measure, set the fraction to a small value as "5:1/64".

unit

It is a dimension the unit of which is defined by the suffix:

• 'in': inches,
• 'cm': centimeters,
• 'pt': points (1/72 inch),
• other or no suffix: pixels (1/96 inch).

The height of a 5 lines staff is 24 pixels.