Re: A few remarks concerning \relative

[David Kastrup]

"Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote Sunday, September 11, 2011 9:39 PM
>
>> "\relative f will interpret whatever note starts that group as if it
>> were specified as an absolute pitch." would be what I meant.
>
> Hhm.  It's a neat trick, but writing
>
> \relative f { b'' ...}
>
> seems more convoluted to me than writing
>
> \relative b'' { b ...}
>
> or have I missed something?

The notation manual recommends using an octave of c to start with,
presumably to cut down on the number of variations of \relative flying
around.  So somebody has considered it a good idea not to have too many
different starting pitches, for whatever reason.

\relative b'' { b ... requires looking at two places in order to figure
out the starting pitch.  \relative f can be considered as an idiom for
"Nothing to be seen here.  The starting pitch is specified inside."

I am not saying that \relative b'' { b ... is bad.  It is rather easy to
interpret.  Yet our notation manual recommend just using an octave of c.
I should think that there is some rationale behind that, and I could
imagine that this rationale might to some degree also apply to \relative
f.  For example, if you put the \relative x in a different place, like a
music function, from the relative music itself, then you might want to
have an easy to remember way to set the starting pitch of the relative
music.

That's the application from "Basso ridiculoso", and I don't consider it
all that ridiculous.

>> I would have considered it a better default
>> for \relative { ... } as well, but that's water down the old
>> drawbridge.
>
> Now that would have been sensible ... maybe still is.

I don't think we should go back here.  That would be way too confusing.

-- 
David Kastrup