Re: When is "-" required in articulations?

[Graham Percival]

On Thu, 22 May 2008 09:46:15 +0100
"Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Valentin Villenave wrote May 22, 2008 9:03 AM
> > "Markup expressions may also be enclosed in double quotes "...".
> > Such expressions are treated as text strings and may not contain
> > nested expressions or commands. Therefore, braces are generally
> > prefered to double quotes."
> >
> > Actually, it would be nice if we had a specific name for such
> > objects. Graham told me to find something but neither he or I could
> > come up with a smart solution.

It's not like I gave up; I just told you to find something and
that I couldn't come up with anything I liked within two minutes.
If we didn't have a name by the time NR 1.8 was ready for the
first draft, I'd explicitly ask -user for suggetsions.


> I think I'll use "text annotation" here, as I want the phrase to
> describe its purpose rather than its type.  But this might not be a
> suitable term for the general case.  Maybe the generic "text string"
> would be suitable, although "string" is computerese.  How about
> "quoted text" as a general name for such objects?

IMO we should invent a term, and use it consistently throughout
the docs.

I'm just throwing out some terms in case one of them causes
somebody to think of something:

Atomic text?   (denoting both single words and quoted text)
Strings?  (bite the bullet: we can't avoid computerese
  completely... although I admit that talking about "strings" to
  musicians would be /very/ icky.  I already have a hard enough time
  describing my area of research)
Immutable text?  (getting too complicated; we have a lot of ESL
  readers.  Besides, I'm not even certain the word makes sense
  here.)

Failing all else, I suppose we /could/ use the terms "markup text"
and "quoted text".  I mean, there are more uses for these terms
(whatever we end up calling them) than just c^\markup{foo} and
c-"foo".  I'm thinking of things like
  \set InstrumentName = #'"Bb clarinet"
vs.
  \set InstrumentName = \markup{ B\flat clarinet }

I'm still not wild about "quoted text", though.

Cheers,
- Graham