Re: Issue 1422 in lilypond: Beam edges over rests should not be centered

[lilypond]

Comment #1 on issue 1422 by markpolesky: Beam edges over rests should not  
be centered
http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=1422

% according to Gardner Read (Example 6-38 on p.93) beams are
% supposed to start at the left edge of the rest and stop at
% the right edge of the rest, not in the middle as lilypond
% (both 2.12 and 2.13) do.

There are enough terrible ideas proposed by Gardner
throughout his book that I've come to regard everything he
wrote with suspicion.

Kurt Stone's treatment of this topic includes nine examples
over almost two pages (pp.15-16), whereas Read gives two
sentences and only one example.  The exact locations of
Stone's beam-edges are perhaps not perfectly consistent,
though for that matter, neither are Read's.  Stone's are
more often centered, and when "stemlets" are involved
(which are occasionally necessary, as Stone demonstrates*),
the centered beam-edges look far nicer.

* { r16[ c8 r16] }

I'd prefer keep the centered beam-edges, and I recommend
developers not to be too reliant on Read.  If you want
examples of some of Read's preposterous suggestions, p.74 in
the second edition (1979) contains several ("Stemming
Altered Unisons").  Also see the bizarre quarter-tone
symbols he recommends in ex. 9-44.  Kurt Stone was thorough
and systematic; Read was too creative and a lot of his ideas
never gained widespread use.

- Mark