Re: Figured bass Documentation issue

[Carl Sorensen]

On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 21:59, Laura Conrad wrote:

> But it's not whether the verb in the explanation should be eats or
> responds to that I'm talking about, it's whether the object of the
> verb should be "note-requests and rest-requests" as it was in the 1.6
> "stuff", or "figured bass requests and rest-requests" as it is now,
> and as you're proposing to leave.  If you don't make it clear that the
> Figured Bass context can contain notes, it makes it very difficult for
> anyone to figure out that it can be written by putting the figures on
> an existing bass line.  Neither the example in the manual nor the
> regression test contains a single note without a figure on it, so it's
> not possible to deduce from them directly how write a typical score,
> where many or often most of the notes don't have figures on them.

I assume that what you'd really like to have available is a syntax that
works like:

mybassline = {dis\figuremode{< 6 >}4 c d\figuremode{< 6 >} ais}
<<
        \context Voice {\clef bass \mybassline}
        \context FiguredBass \mybassline
>>

So that you can pass the exact same music expression to the clef, which
prints the notes, and to the FiguredBass, which prints the figures.

If such a syntax in fact works, the manual doesn't make it clear.  Does
it work?

I know almost nothing about figured bass.  You refer to scores that have
most notes without figures.  What about figures without notes?  The
figured bass example in the manual has 4 quarter notes and a quarter-
note figure followed by 2 eighth-note figures followed by 2 quarter-note
figures.  I don't see how the structure above could produce more figures
than there are notes (I guess you could make simultaneous music with a
quarter note and two eighth-note skips, each of which has a figure
attached).

Is this even close to what you're after, to have available in the code
if it's not, and have documented if it is?

It does seem to me that the relationship between the FiguredBass context
and the bass clef context is a lot like the relationship between the
ChordNames context and the FretDiagrams context, i.e., you certainly
want to be able to pass the same music expression to both contexts, and
have each context do the right thing.

Carl Sorensen