Re: notating hammer-ons and pull-offs
At the 2009 Interlochen Workshop, we had a group discussion about changes to StaffTab that would make it less cluttered.
The convention I adopted for hammer-ons and pull-oiffs out of that discussion was to use a slur.
Since th finger symbols change, it's easy to differentiate between a:
tied note, where the note and finger symbol stay the same
slide, where the finger doesn't change, but the note does
hanner-on/pulloff, where both finger and note change.
This was the convention I ended up using for the Songbook, and all other StaffTab I've done since. I think it's much better than having a different symbol.
Here's an example of what it looks like (melody in the first measure).
My favorite thing about this convention is that any time you see an arc on the page (tie or slur) it always means one thing, fingers are staying on strings, as opposed to "clean taps" where a note is articulated on a string that's not already vibrating.