Win(d)Bag

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Read the writeup · Play the tunes

A Great Highland bagpipe tune player for Windows 3.1, written in Visual Basic 3 between 1995 and 2000. The first version, now lost, was written in BASIC on an IBM PCjr in the early 1990s. Tunes are typed as plain text in the .wbg format and played on the PC speaker, with the melody and gracenote speeds set separately. The web edition plays the same files in a browser.

The progression: BASIC → Visual Basic → Perl → Python (Claude Code) → HTML (Claude Code).

Whose work this is. Win(d)Bag, the .wbg format, the practice-chanter tuning window, the Perl players and the colouring of the Holbein woodcut are Michael Carnright's. The Python players and the web edition are later ports, written with Claude Code. The tunes are not his: they are traditional or by other composers, many in settings from pipe tutor books. Their .wbg transcriptions are his.

Contents

Path	What
index.html	the writeup
play.html	the web edition; play.html?test runs its parser tests
vb3/	Visual Basic 3 source of version 0.2 (16 September 2000): forms, modules, project, button images, format notes, original READMEs
perl/	windbag.perl, windbag2.perl (adds embellishment names) and helpers
python/	terminal and Tk players for macOS that play tunes/, embellishment names included, and a uilleann variant (.uwbg)
tunes/	95 tunes: marches and airs, Irish tunes, band sets, tutor-book settings, exercises and two demos
uwbg/	three traditional tunes for the uilleann player: Òró Sé do Bheatha Bhaile, a lament and the Epitaph of Seikilos
images/le-fol.png	Holbein's Le Fol, as coloured for the original main window
bundle_tunes.py	builds every .wbg in tunes/ into play.html

Adding a tune

Put the .wbg file in tunes/ and run

python3 bundle_tunes.py

or just drop the file on the web edition.

The Visual Basic runtime and the third-party controls the program needs (VBRUN300.DLL, CMDIALOG.VBX, THREED.VBX, WINSOUND.DLL) are not included.