Installation is now a lot easier than before. If you are using the Microsoft Windows platform (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10), download and execute Runabc_2011*_setup.exe which will not only install runabc.exe but also the required support executables in abcMIDI. On other platforms, you will need the source code runabc.tcl and the tcl/tk 8.5 interpreter. SumatraPDF and ghostview discussed below are now optional provided you have an internet browser and use abcm2ps to create a xhtml or svg file instead of a postscript file. If you wish to use yaps or abc2ps or other converters then you will need ghostview and SumatraPDF discussed below. The rest of this discussion will assume that you are starting with the source code.
Runabc.tcl is a tcl/tk script which requires a Tcl/Tk environment. To execute runabc.tcl you should have Tcl/Tk 8.5 which you can find at http://www.activestate.com/activetcl. Select the package appropriate for your system and install it. The package without the source code is somewhat over 9 Mbytes on my computer.
If you do not wish to install Tcl/Tk 8.5 there is still another alternative. You can execute runabc.kit which will run on any system where tclkit has been installed. Tclkit has been ported to almost every system and is about 1 megabyte. You can get tclkit from http://code.google.com/p/tclkit/ This may be the preferable approach, if you have an older version of Tcl/Tk on your system and you do not feel comfortable building a new version from source. The link how to get started tells you how to setup tclkit on your system. (For Microsoft Windows, you should also associate the .kit extension with tclkit.)
Runabc.tcl should be installed in a folder which has read/write/execution access. Runabc.tcl will create a file runabc.ini which saves the user's settings and states. A folder tmp/ for transferring information to the other executables is also created. If more than one user is using runabc.tcl on a system, each user should have a personal copy of runabc.tcl in their home directory.
Note that even if you are only running runabc.kit or runabc.exe, you may wish to download runabc.zip and unpack it. Besides runabc.tcl, it contains other useful stuff, such as an icon (runabc.ico), *.fmt files for abc*2ps, sample abc files and a description of the latest updates in runhistory.txt. Note that all the files including runabc.tcl are text files which can be viewed with any editor.
You also need the James Allwrights's abcMIDI package consisting of abc2midi, yaps, abc2abc and other programs. James Allwright is no longer supporting this package and I have made numerous fixes as well as added new features. Executables for the package are available for some platforms; otherwise you will need to build them yourself from the source code.
You can find the latest abcMIDI sources of abcMIDI from my main page http://ifdo.ca/~seymour/runabc/top.html and compile it on your system. Executables for Microsoft Windows can also be found on the same site. Other precompiled versions systems are available on Guido Gonzato's site The abcplus Homepage.
To convert the abc files to postscript files displaying the sheet music, you also need Jeff Moine's abcm2ps package. The executable for the PC is included with abcMIDI executables on my site.
A MIDI player is also handy. They usually come with the operating system or sound card. If you have the capability of playing audio files but no MIDI capability, you could download the TiMidity package. Free SoundFont patches for Timidity may be obtained from Big Soundfont
Finally you need a Postscript viewer. For Microsoft Windows, I recommend SumatraPDF which is entirely free. You can get it from sumatrapdf. (Sumatra is available from many other sites like CNET if the above link is too slow.) SumatraPDF is actually a pdf file viewer; however, if you also install Ghostview SumatraPDF will also be able to display PostScript files. (This is an undocumented feature.) The Ghostview package with all its fonts is about 6 Megabytes. For Microsoft Windows, you should download the latest version (eg gs902w32.exe). If SumatraPDF returns a message that it cannot read Out.ps, this implies that it could not find the Ghostview package which should be in the Program Files/gs directory. Alternative PostScript viewers that you can use are gsview or Acrobat.
On Linux, I prefer to use the PostScript viewer called Evince.
You can find many other software packages and abc notated files from Chris Walshaw's, The abc Homepage.
Return to top level to download runabc.zip.