Re: Compound time signature style

[Hans Aberg]

> On 7 Nov 2014, at 13:55, Dan Eble <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> On Nov 7, 2014, at 01:46 , David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 
>> Dan Eble <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>>> If both \compoundMeter #(2 3 8) and \compoundMeter 4/4 could be made
>>> to work, why bother keeping both \compoundMeter and \time?  Why not
>>> just let \time do all the work?
>> 
>> Because of
>> 
>> \time #'(2 3 2) #'(8 8)
>> 
>> Is it \time (2 + 3)/2 followed by #'(8 8) or is it \time 8/8 with a beat
>> structure of 2+3+2 ?
> 
> Shame on me for not reading the code for \time; but if one were serious about 
> creating a more uniform interface, one could write a conversion rule rather 
> than sticking with the old syntax exactly, right?  (Hans just said he uses a 
> separate command to set the beat structure anyway.)

The way I remember it, \compoundMeter should have been able to capture the kind 
of subaccent structures I described and display it in the subbeaming, but it 
proved difficult to implement. The question is not difficult to understand 
conceptually, but hard to pin down algorithmically.

Since \compoundMeter does not capture this kind of subbeaming, I decided to use 
'\set beatStructure’ instead. In oriental music, one normally just sums it up 
as in \time, and the subbeaming practises vary, even in the same score.

So from the practical point of view, it is not a big deal, but it would still 
be nice to be able to typeset it.

> It doesn’t matter right now, though.  I’ll keep \compoundMeter numeric.  
> Thanks for your help.

I think, too this is best: the books I have looked into speak about the meter 
4/4 numerically, but note that one can write C, too, as an option. The latter 
is though common in some quarters.