Re: hyphen syntax

[Noeck]

Hi,

Am 17.02.2016 um 17:54 schrieb Simon Albrecht:
> And I think the double items suit the advanced functionality better

I thought about this when Dan wrote his first mail, but I wanted to keep
my comment short. I think many of you know the fun you can have with
backslashes and escaping (as in http://xkcd.org/1638/). So it is a good
idea to use rare expressions for special functionality to avoid escaping
to get back to the original thing (\ or -).

But the hyphen is just the most natural thing in a lyricmode
environment. People asked on this list about it and also in scores
online I see people using single hyphens because they are just natural.
Some try 'a - b', realize it uses 3 notes and then go for 'a- b'.
Technically, soft hyphens would be nice (U+00AD) but who wants to enter
that (and its invisible in the code).

My impression of LilyPond is: The core functionality is very cleverly
designed and very concise, just think about { a4:16-.->\f( }. One could
have invented something like \notemode {
a1/4\tremolo{1/16}\staccato\accent\dynamic{f}\startSlur }. This was only
obtained by defining the reasonably shortest syntax for the most
frequent items.

So I agree with the sentiment I read from Dan's first mail: The single
hyphen would be natural to separate syllables. For the rare case of a
literal single hyphen, I think "-" is a fair way to get it. Or to come
back to the quote I started with: IMHO a lyric hyphen is not advanced.

Just my comment.
Joram