abcselect
---------

abcselect is a small tool for extracting parts, movements
etc. from files in the abc format of music notation.

It was first named "abc2abc" but that was the name of
a tool by James Allwrigth as well; thus it is now
named "abcselect" in analogy to "psselect".

abcselect is copyrighted by Christoph Dalitz and can be
distributed freely under the GNU GPL.


Requirements
------------

abcselect is a Perl script and requires a Perl version >= 5.0.
If you are not sure about the version installed on your
system, check it out with "perl -v".

On Unix systems, Perl is usually shipped with the operating
system.

On Win32 systems you need to install the Perl interpreter
first. Depending on your preferences, you can obtain Perl
for Win32 from two different places:

a) As part of Cygwin (http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/).
   Start the installer from the Cygwin website and choose
   at least "bash" and "perl" in the software selection.
   Then you can start perl scripts directly from the "bash"
   shell, which is a much more comfortable command interface
   than the "DOS shell" that is shipped as "cmd.exe" (with
   Windows NT/2000/XP) or "command.com" (with Windows 95/98/ME).

b) From Active State (http://www.activestate.com/ActivePerl/).
   In this case you must invoke perl scripts from the "DOS shell".
   In order to faciliate this, the Active State Perl distribution
   contains a program "pl2bat" which puts a DOS-script ("BAT file")
   wrapper around a Perl script.

Version a) is easier to install and use, but version b) is more
interesting if you plan to do more with Perl yourself, because
Active State offers some interesting commercial addons for Perl
on Win32 and some Perl addons (eg. for manipulating Windows
Registry entries) might be available only for the Active State
distribution.


Installation
------------

Unix:

1. Adjust the first line in abcselect to the full path
   of your perl executable.
   (If you get an error "abcselect: file or directory not found"
   on the invocation of abcselect, this line is probably not
   correct.)

2. Copy abcselect into a directory in your path (eg. /usr/local/bin)
   and make it executable (chmod a+x abcselect).

3. Copy the man page abcselect.1 into a man page directory
   (eg. /usr/local/man/man1).

Win32:

If you plan to call abcselect from the bash shell (part of Cygwin),
you can follow steps 1. and 2. of the Unix installation.

If you are a masochist and insist on using the crappy DOS shell,
do the following:

1. Create a DOS-script "abcselect.bat" with the command
   "pl2bat abcselect". Note that this only works when you are using
   the Active State Perl distribution.

2. Put that DOS script somewhere in your path
   (eg. C:\Windows or C:\Winnt)


Usage:
------

"abcselect -?" gives a usage message. If invoked without any
parameter, abcselect reads from stdin and writes to stdout.

Please consult the man page for details. On Unix, simply type
"man abcselect", on Windows you can to consult the html version
of the man page, "abcselect.html".

August 2002

Christoph Dalitz
<christoph.dalitz@hs-niederrhein.de>