RE: Re: Parallel Square Premusic

[have]

You want whitespace in your parallel squares?

 

Don't you think that's akin to demanding a hexadecimal file include space in between each digit? Wouldn't it be smarter to delegate the spacing task to programs optimized for a square environment, as hex editors are optimized for a hexadecimal environment, yet leave the output file alone? You're essentially asking me to multiply the filesize by 3/2 so that you can entertain this notion that G5G5G5 is somehow more difficult to register as a series of letter note names followed by their octave number in scientific pitch than is G5 G5 G5. There will never be a letter in the second column or a number in the first. Why is this so complicated?

 

Please tell me what you want to encode so I can tell you how the immensely powerful Parallel Squares' format can do it. Like everyone else who's tried to break it. "Semantics" isn't enough.

 

--------- Original Message ---------

Subject: Re: Parallel Square Premusic
From: "Carl Sorensen" <address@hidden>
Date: 3/22/17 6:43 pm
To: "address@hidden" <address@hidden>, "Ralph Palmer" <address@hidden>
Cc: "address@hidden" <address@hidden>



On 3/22/17 10:57 AM, "address@hidden" <address@hidden> wrote:

>What's hard to follow? Please, critique my format verbosely. When you see
>
>[]rh --dadada||daaaaaaa||--dadada||daaaaaaa
>
>Are you unable to discern from the 'rh' or my instructions that this is
>the rhythm line, or do you not know how to read aloud "dadada daaaaaaa"?
>Or, having read it aloud, are you not able to understand the inherent
>correlation between the length of a printed word and the time delegated
>to its pronunciation? Having understood it, are you not able to see the
>usefulness of a formalization of the length of a "daaa" as corresponding
>to the length of its note?

Personally, I don't *want* to have the rhythm separated from the pitch.
One of the great benefits for sheet music is that the rhythm and the pitch
are connected. And for me, LilyPond input also has that same benefit.

>
>When you see
>
>[]pi E5E5F5G5||G5F5E5D5||C5C5D5E5||E5D5D5--
>
>Are you unable to discern from the 'pi' that this is a pitch line, or are
>you unable to recognize the use of scientific pitch notation, or do you
>refuse to acknowledge its existence, or refuse to understand it?
>
>Are you not able to understand that a G5 and a da on top of each other
>correspond to the same point of music?

I'm able to discern it, but I find it very hard to parse the squares.
They run into one another. There is no whitespace in your format.
Whitespace is key to being able to easily parse content for my eyes; maybe
not so much for yours.

Finally, the main thing I find missing in your format is that it is very
poor at encoding semantics. It's just a plaintext rendering of a very
static music layout.

I'm a strong believer in semantic input. I prefer LaTeX to Word (or Open
Office) because it does a better job of explicitly supporting semantic
(rather than graphic) markup. Certainly one can use styles in OpenOffice
to carry semantic markup, but it's not visually obvious that this is being
done.

Your plaintext format provides no visual cues to the semantic markup, in
my opinion.

Perhaps the world will judge Parallel Square Premusic to be the best
possible text encoding of music. But even if it does, I will not be using
Parallel Square Premusic. I prefer LilyPond "Premusic", as it speaks much
better to me.

Good luck in your endeavor.

Carl