Re: [GLISS] differentiating pre/post/neutral commands

[Reinhold Kainhofer]

On 2012-09-03 22:43, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> > >  From a user's point of view who has to write a lot of piano music,
> > > `q' is *really* valuable.
> >
> > In a score editor.  Like Emacs' LilyPond-mode.  Or Frescobaldi.
> > Nobody says that you should not be able to make use of shortcuts,
> > but that does not mean that the LilyPond language is the right place
> > for providing them.
>
> No, no, and again no!  I want *readable* lilypond input.  Compare
> this:
>
>
>     <a c es f>8\f <a c es f> <a c es f> <a c es f>\p
>       <a c es f> <a b es f>\f <a c es f>\p <a c es f> |
>
> with this:
>
>    <a c es f>8\f q q q\p
>      q <a b es f>\f <a c es f>\p q |
>
> In the first version, have you immediately seen the note change from
> `c' to `b' in the fifth chord?  Only in the second version it's clear
> that it is not a typo.
>
> Chord repetition is a *central* part of piano music (and not only
> there).  It really deserves a proper syntax, and I'm glad that we have
> it now.

I can completely second this as a music publisher. I made an edition of 
Schubert's Nachthelle, where the right hand consists entirely of (mostly 
repeated, but also often slightly changed) 16th chords. From this 
experience, I really would not want to miss q as part of the lilypond 
syntax.

The existence of q not only made writing much easier (which could 
admittedly also be achieved by editor shortcuts), but the main advantage 
was that it made proofreading and later editing MUCH easier.

For one, as Werner already noticed, it is immediately obvious where a 
chord changes.
And the other reason is that the repeated chords written out fully hide 
the rhythm, while with the 'q' notation you can see the rhythm as easily 
as with single notes. I had that experience with another score.


> > q is one of those features that make LilyPond unfeasible as a
> > storage format for music.

What makes lilypond unfeasiable as a storage format is that its 
internals change so often. In particular, we currently have the 
viewpoint that changes to \overrides are internals, so we don't have to 
care about compatibility. In other words: We care only about trivial 
scores, where absolutely no overrides are required. In reality, however, 
I have not encountered a single score without any overrides for layout 
purposes.
Since we don't guarantee anything about \override, one can never be sure 
that a huge score you are writing today will still work in a few months.

Cheers,
Reinhold

--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhold Kainhofer, address@hidden, http://www.kainhofer.com
 * Financial & Actuarial Math., Vienna Univ. of Technology, Austria
 * http://www.fam.tuwien.ac.at/, DVR: 0005886
 * Edition Kainhofer, Music Publisher, http://www.edition-kainhofer.com