Re: New feature suggestion

[Keith OHara]

Phil Holmes <mail <at> philholmes.net> writes:

> "David Winfrey" <dlw <at> patriot.net> wrote in message 
> news:loom.20140822T182826-365 <at> post.gmane.org...
> >
> > A new accidental for entering natural notes would be useful.
> >
> > In English, this would be 'n', as in 'bn4' or 'gn2'.
> >
> > These would have exactly the same effect as 'b4' or 'g2',
> > but would be easier to debug.
> >
> > If the user is entering or editing music in the key of F,
> > or some other key where B is normally flat, it is often
> > not clear if 'b4' was intended to be B-natural, or if
> > someone just forgot to flat it.
> >
> > If the note is written as 'bn4', the note was clearly
> > meant to be B-natural.
> 
> But if you enter b4 in F major, you'll get a natural typeset, so there 
can 
> be no confusion.  It seems like you're effectively proposing that b4 is a 
b 
> natural I've entered accidentally, but bn4 is one I've entered 
deliberately. 
> How would Lily show the difference?
> 

As I understand David, Lily need not show any difference.
Accepting the explicit bn helps the user read his own input.

If you learned the note-names as referring generically to scale steps,
with B being the general term, B-natural and B-sharp the specific terms,
and say things like "in F major the Bs are flattened", then LilyPonds
names for natural notes seem frustratingly ambiguous.

LilyPond uses the Dutch way of thinking, that B is the name of a pitch,
Bes the name of another pitch, and you would say "B is not in the F major
mode; Bes is."