Re: Towards a new pitch representation

[Carl Sorensen]

On 12/31/10 8:46 AM, "David Kastrup" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Carl Sorensen <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>> No need to decide how many of them.  Just make the argument a list,
>> instead of a cons cell, and give the user access to change the length
>> of the list if they want to.
> 
> Huh?  "Access to change the length of the list"?  We are talking about a
> list, don't we?  Not an array?  The list is whatever length you need at
> any particular point of time.  If it is a list of alterations, quite
> possibly length 0.

As long as we're talking about a list, not a pair.  The current test
implementation is a pair.

> 
>> For the default distribution, the list length should be two, because
>> we have symbols for quarter-tone alterations, but no symbols for
>> anything smaller.
> 
> Huh?  What point is there in declaring a certain list length in advance
> rather than just using what is needed?

No point in general.  For the midi conversion, the list that defines the
magnitude of the alterations needs to be defined at the maximum allowed
alteration resolution.

If we go with a list of rationals, then there is no need to define any list
length in advance.

There does need to be some correspondence between the list of alterations
and the symbols used for displaying the alterations.

Thanks,

Carl