Re: sharping naturals

[David Kastrup]

David Raleigh Arnold <address@hidden> writes:

> On Thu, 23 Jul 2015 11:33:50 -0500
> Brother Gabriel-Marie <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> When you use key signatures like A major or B Major you end 
>> up with a lot of naturals in the score for which you may 
>> have to manually add sharps.
>> 
>> Is there a switch that will automatically sharp all the 
>> naturals?
>> I was looking at this:
>> http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/notation/displaying-pitches#automatic-accidentals
>> 
>> This was the closest I could see:
>> \accidentalStyle modern
>> 
> The developers have resisted this from the beginning, because
> they don't realize how easy it would be. There may be also a
> certain contempt for the user or composer who is not expected to
> know what key he's in.

Well, at some point of time you'll need to decide yourself whether
LilyPond's semantics are due to stupidity or to malice.  It seems a bit
greedy to claim both.

At any rate, it is more a certain contempt for the computer that is not
expected to know what key it's in.  Instead, it uses accidental rules at
the time of typesetting (not even iteration) in order to figure out the
best graphical representation for the pitch.  That's not infallible as
issues like
<URL:https://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=1134> show.

That reminder and cautionary accidentals are an integral part of music
typesetting would tend to give some indication that humans share those
problems.

At any rate, I cannot find a single commit in all of LilyPond's code
base attributed to you.

Wouldn't it be more convincing if you were able to back up your better
understanding of the involved matters with actual code?  There are quite
a number of outstanding bugs that can be attributed to an imperfect
understanding of LilyPond as to what the current key is.

-- 
David Kastrup