Re: spacer rest *

[David Kastrup]

David Wright <address@hidden> writes:

> On Tue 01 May 2018 at 00:15:24 (+0200), David Kastrup wrote:
>> David Wright <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>> > AFAICT the important exception that was introduced with naked
>> > durations was that c 4 notates a single note whereas c4 4 notates two.
>> 
>> There was no "exception" introduced.  c 4 always indicated a single note
>> and c4 4 previously was invalid input.
>
> There's no guarantee that a new user, or a user who has only set eyes
> on notation like c4, will make the correct interpretation of, say,
> c 4 4 4 when they first encounter it. Without looking it up, there's
> no way of knowing whether LP would treat it as three notes or four.

Without looking anything up, you cannot know the interpretation of
anything.  At any rate, I objected to an "exception" being "introduced"
since LilyPond continued behaving absolutely the same for any previously
valid input.  Spaces never ever were relevant.  And we did not even
start putting spaces into the documentation where they hadn't been
before except in very particular circumstances (like drum notation using
always the same drum).

> So if a new user thinks that a naked duration always specifies a note
> they're likely to see the first duration in c 4 4 4 as an exception.

The first duration in c 4 4 4 is not a naked duration.  It's not the
space which makes it "naked" but the lack of pitch to attach to.

Let me quote the documentation on this:

       Isolated durations – durations without a pitch – that occur within a
    music sequence will take their pitch from the preceding note or chord.

         \relative {
           \time 8/1
           c'' \longa \breve 1 2
           4 8 16 32 64 128 128
         }

         [music image]

       Isolated pitches – pitches without a duration – that occur within a
    music sequence will take their duration from the preceding note or
    chord.  If there is no preceding duration, then default for the note is
    always ‘4’, a quarter note.

Nowhere does this talk about spaces.

-- 
David Kastrup