Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden)

[Keith OHara]

On Sun, 17 May 2015 04:58:22 -0700, <address@hidden> wrote:

> The proper name for this would \absoluteWithFixedOctaveOffset, but
> that's too long and the acronym is similarly uninspiring.  All three of
> the proposed options appear in this name, so the question is, "Which
> alludes most memorably to the actual function?".  At the risk of going
> round in circles, on reconsidering in this light, I rather favour
> retaining \absolute.  The other terms are modifiers to the primary
> function; the offset is both apparent and optional, "absolute" is used
> in the text and is an established concept.

The word "absolute" is established in the docs and in the user community to mean the method of 
entering pitches where octave marks ' and , count octaves from the "small octave" of Helmholtz 
notation, so the octaves are indicated against an absolute reference.  As Carl pointed out, a function that 
applies an octave offset changes that reference, so is different from "absolute".

The two functions \fixed and \relative each convert user input into absolute 
pitches.
\relative applies octave marks relative to the previous pitch; \fixed adds 
octave marks to those of a fixed pitch.

The primary function of the music-function \absolute is to write a stretch of 
absolute pitches within \relative, but the primary function of \fixed will be 
to choose the fixed octave from which entered octave marks count.

I switched the name in the patch from \absolute to \fixed when I made the function skip over any 
enclosed \relative section.  The docs say the starting pitch in \relative is an absolute pitch, and 
I didn't want to start making the distinction of "absolute octaves"  versus "the 
octave established by the enclosing absolute" so I made the change
  \absolute c'' {c e g \relative c, {c e g} } => c''4 e'' g'' c' e' g'
  \fixed c'' {c e g \relative c, {c e g} }   =>  c''4 e'' g'' c, e, g,

For some reason I find the word 'fixed' easier to type than 'absolute'

I started looking ahead at further documentation, and found \fixed more natural
https://codereview.appspot.com/235010043/diff/120001/Documentation/learning/tutorial.itely
but I backed away from adding anything to the Tutorial because \relative is 
enough to learn there.

BTW, I started replacing @lilypond[relative=2] with complete examples
  https://codereview.appspot.com/237340043/
I replaced with explicit \relative, but the patch set is a quick way to skim 
the examples in the Learing Manual where we chose to hide the '\relative' and 
imaging how \fixed or \absolute might work.