The woodenflute mailing list abc tune archive - how the archive is compiled

I originally wrote the following for a posting to the TradTunes (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tradtunes) mailing list, 13th August 2001. On the off chance anyone else might find it interesting or useful I've reposted it here.

Steve Mansfield, August 2001

The woodenflute archive is compiled by a (Delphi) programme which trawls through the monthly list archive and automatically inserts a Z: field if there isn't already one present (although, as the generated Z: field is based on the identifier part of the 'From:' field in the mail header, I always end up doing a manual tidy to get rid of oddities, shared account names and the like). I also do a manual trawl through the archive trying to match up any tunes posted without titles to any subsequent suggestions of what the title might be, using multiple T: fields to record the suggestions if necessary.

I put the resulting abc tunes file into both Abc2Win and abc2ps, play through all the tunes (on the flute, naturally), and correct the bare minimum I can possibly get away with in terms of adding abc headers to make them viable abc files where necessary - I try to never interfere with the *melody* notation except in extreme circumstances, as I'm interested in differing variants of the same tune and might, in the great Victorian collecting tradition, end up 'correcting' something which was actually thoroughly intended.

I publish on a three-monthly cycle. I did the first archive in May 2000 (covering October 1998 - April 2000), so the quarterly updates come out in August, November, February and May. I've just consolidated the first four updates (covering May 2000 - April 2001) into one single file, a move which nobody has objected to.

I find this automated method a lot easier than trying to cut and paste every tune that appears on the list into a file as and when it occurs - the updates take an hour or two every three months, which is a level of time and energy commitment I'm very happy with - I'm also frequently engaged in tweakage of the automation programme of course.

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