Re: Advice on naming and structuring scholarLY commands

[David Kastrup]

Flaming Hakama by Elaine <address@hidden> writes:

> This is probably tilting at windmills at this point,
> since we seem to have adopted this language,
> both in LilyPond and in the ee.
>
> But, from the perspective of our terminology reflecting English language
> usage,
> I feel compelled to point out that "consist" and "consisted"
> are not used in English as active verbs.
>
> Yes, these do work in the passive, or in the past tense.
> As in "my meal consisted of steak and potatoes",
> or "my meal consists of steak and potatoes".
>
> But you would not say, "I consisted a meal of steak and potatoes", nor
> would you say, "I consisted parsley to a meal of steak and potatoes."

So you are complaining that our use of the verb does not match the
description of some naturally occuring entirely different phenomenon?

> But when using it as a word, it does not parse well:
>
>> When an engraver is consisted to a Voice or Staff or similar context
>> only properties created through overrides are visible to the
>> acknowledger while tweaks seem to be hidden. However, if I consist the
>> engraver to Score also tweaks are recognized.
>
>
> Here is a usage of the \consists command:
>
>   \context {
>     \Staff
>     \consists Mark_engraver
>     \consists Metronome_mark_engraver
>   }
>
> To convey what this does, it would be more along the lines of
> "Create a Staff context that consists of a Mark_engraver and
> Metronome_mark_engraver".

Which forms a grammatical statement which, when interpreted at its
grammatical meaning, is factually utterly wrong.

> I mean, you could say that, but it does not make sense to a native
> English speaker.

Which is better than making wrong sense.  It makes obvious that we are
using a non-standard sense of the word borrowing from the meaning of the
reserved word in its context of LilyPond rather than the natural world.

> In this sense, if commands are to be read as verbs, maybe we should change
> the command name.
> Is there a reason why we couldn't use \with, or \add ?
>
>   \context {
>     \Staff
>     \with Mark_engraver
>     \with Metronome_mark_engraver
>   }

\with is taken.

>   \context {
>     \Staff
>     \add Mark_engraver
>     \add Metronome_mark_engraver
>   }
>
> I think that conveys more clearly what is happening.

Not really: that remains something to look up in the documentation.

Now I'll readily admit that \consists / \remove does not make for an
appealing antonym pair.  I'd be leary after all this time of turning a
common word like "add" into a reserved word even though "remove" is not
better in that regard.  But at least it has the advantage of being
established.

-- 
David Kastrup