How do I get my favorite browser to handle abc files?
This is another question for which further research is needed … If you are using Netscape, and have perl, abc2ps and ghostview (that is, you are probably a Unix user ;-), then you might be interested in my Helper and abc2gv scripts, which team up to implement a browser “helper” app that can be used to automate display of abc files. If installed correctly, with a .helpers file in your home directory, you can click on a link to a .abc file and a couple of seconds later a window will pop up with the music displayed. This works well with single-tune files; it becomes rather slow and unweildy when you try to access some of the huge single-file abc collections on the net. Also, this scheme doesn’t seem to work with Mosaic or lynx (though their docs say it should), and MSIE is a complete unknown to me. Maybe someone else can send me further information about other browsers. Ultimately, what is needed to do this correctly is to establish an official abc MIME type, and pressure all suppliers
