Re: Autobeaming patch rev 2

[Carl D. Sorensen]

On 8/22/08 4:38 AM, "Mats Bengtsson" <address@hidden> wrote:
>> I never understood why there should be a difference between manual and
>> automatic
>> beams, when it comes to beam subdivisions.

Neither have I.  The confusion came because beatGrouping wasn't implemented
in autobeaming, so it was very difficult to make the right thing happen.

>> When it comes to the interpretation of the term "beat length" I may be
>> completely wrong
>> since I'm not a native English speaker, but if somebody asked me what
>> the beat length was
>> in 6/8, for example, I would immediately say 3/8, i.e. that you "stamp
>> your foot" twice
>> a measure when you play the music (unless you had a conductor as in
>> our youth orchestra
>> who shouted "no feet" if anybody trusted his/her own foot more than
>> the conductor).

Under the proposed system, 6/8 would be defined as having a beatLength
of 1/8 (used for subdividing) and a beatGrouping of '(3 3) used for
autobeaming.  And it works quite nicely that way.
>>
>> At least previously, the beatLength has been used both for beam
>> subdivision and for
>> autobeaming (see case 5 in the comment in auto-beam.scm). This has
>> caused me quite
>> some confusion and I've always needed some trial and error to sort out
>> the appropriate
>> settings. I haven't looked at your patch, but hope that the influence
>> of the different
>> property settings is more transparent now.

I hope so too.  This all got started because I couldn't figure out how it
worked when I was writing the beaming section in the manual.

Carl