[GLISS] verbifying music functions

[Graham Percival]

On Sat, Sep 01, 2012 at 10:58:31PM +0200, Nicolas Sceaux wrote:
> Le 1 sept. 2012 à 18:25, Graham Percival a écrit :
> 
> > Continuing to brainstorm on the problem of it not being obvious to
> > which note a particular \command refers to, what if we used:
> 
> If a prefix music function is consistently named according to some rule
> (e.g. a verb, as was proposed), and variables to that other rule, then
> the reading problem is solved.
...
> That's not a syntax/parser issue, imho.

Sure; GLISS is about the language as a whole, not just the parser.
Let's have a look at verbifying music functions.


address@hidden:~/src/lilypond (master)
$ grep "=$" ly/music-functions-init.ly | cut -d \  -f 1

I'll add suggested names for that list.  The As mostly look good.

acciaccatura      => \addAcciatura ?  not nice
addInstrumentDefinition
addQuote
afterGrace        => \addAfterGrace ?  not nice
allowPageTurn
alterBroken
appendToTag
applyContext
applyMusic
applyOutput
appoggiatura     => \addAppoggiatura ?  not nice
assertBeamQuant
assertBeamSlope
autochange

% so far most of the music functions are already verbs, although
% I'm not wild about changing the remaining ones to be verbs.  So
% maybe it would be good to have a few exceptions to the "music
% functions are verbs" idea.

balloonGrobText   => \addBalloonGrobText
balloonText       => \addBalloonText
bar               => \addBar ; maybe special-case it?
barNumberCheck    => \addBarNumberCheck ; maybe special-case it?
bendAfter
bookOutputName    % special-case to remain as-is?
bookOutputSuffix  % special-case to remain as-is?
breathe

% it's true that the word "balloon" can be a verb in English, but
% that's fairly rare usage, i.e. "his stomach ballooned after
% eating Thanksgiving dinner".  Similarly, "book him" can be a
% verb, but "book" is not used as a verb in this context.

clef
compoundMeter
crossStaff
cueClef
cueClefUnset
cueDuring
cueDuringWithClef

% as it happens, none of the Cs are verbs.  (again, words such as
% "cue" can be both a verb and a noun, but the thing that a
% conductor does is a verb-cue, whereas the thing in the score is
% a noun-cue.)   However, I think it would be really awkward to
% change to something like \addClef.


I won't go through the rest of the music functions right now, but
I think that the rule for naming music functions needs to be
complicated than previously thought.  A few alternate rules spring
to mind:
- if a music function affects a note, it always begins with \add,
  or ends with an \...After; if a music function does not affect a
  note (i.e. \clef) then it doesn't change.
- if it affects a note, the name begins with a capital letter,
  otherwise it doesn't.  (or vice-versa)
- if it affects a note, a - is appended to the name, i.e.
  \afterGrace-

As with previous brainstorming lists, I'm deliberately not
filtering out bad ideas.

- Graham