Ah, so much boo-hooing of tab. Bah. At this point just take it for what it is: a simple way to convey information that even folks with no experience can grasp.
Tab was responsible for a good deal of my initial learning, I'm super thankful for a form of musical information that can be conveyed using only text, without it, I think I would have suffered musically.
Do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life...
I would agree with Alex on this one. I know a number of people who can read music and play what they see very fast (piano players mostly) but don't know any theory whatsoever.
In essence, I think tab and standard notation are basically serving the same purpose, (visual representation of pitch and timing). At this point, most tab is kind of primitive but I've seen some transcriptions that use a kind of bastard child of tablature and sheet music. It's tab, but the numbers have the standard stems on them indicating the timing. The key and time signature are indicated in a little box in the corner usually. Seems like a good idea to me, not as universally transferrable, but I was playing songs I had never heard before fairly quickly using it.
