Re: Proposed context property renaming

[Trevor Bača]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 5:18 PM Christopher Heckman <
christopher.heckman@asu.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 3:32 PM <lilypond-devel-request@gnu.org> wrote:
> >
> > Perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way, but I wish we would more
> > carefully distinguish between "duration" as a measure of *time* and
> > "length" as a measure of *space*. LilyPond deals in a crucial way with
> both
> > of these things. Musical events have a duration; they can be measured in
> > seconds (or fractions of a whole note). The physical dimensions of paper
> > (and distances between objects on the page) have a length; they can be
> > measured in centimeters, inches, points and the like.
> >
>
> Unfortunately, "length" can also refer to time so is ambiguous at best.
>
> Why not "distance" as a measure of space instead?


The point isn't that "length" can be used for both space and time.

The point is that "duration" refers unambiguously to time.

So, where we refer to lengths of time, we should use the word that
unambiguously refers to what we mean.

The way things are going now, the tortured idea of a "music length" is
spreading through public names in the API, where what is meant, in
seemingly every case, is a duration. I think (but am waiting for answers in
other threads) that this is happening because of a want to retain the word
"duration" to refer exclusively to the highly LilyPond-specific "dotted
integer" construct we use *to represent* a duration during note-entry. If
that is, in fact, what's going on then there will be more to say later on.

-- 
Trevor Bača
www.trevorbaca.com
soundcloud.com/trevorbaca