Re: The hel-arabic.ly file story...

[Aaron Hill]

On 2023-01-13 12:23 am, Luca Fascione wrote:
> Hassan,
> it would help us enormously if you could share with us the reasoning 
> behind
> these choices.
> For example, you stated "All key signatures for maqams go in 
> hel-arabic.ly":
> could you explain to us
> why this is the better place for them, compared to arabic.ly?
> This will provide some intuition to all involved as to how to make 
> similar
> choices in the future, for example.

While I readily admit I lack experience with music of Arabic traditions, 
I for one am confused why there are two different includes.  arabic.ly 
seems like it should be the default starting point, as it has the 
simpler, more direct naming.  On the other hand, hel-arabic.ly would at 
a glance appear to be for a more specific flavor or subset of music.  As 
such, it would logically follow that hel-arabic.ly inherits from 
arabic.ly, as all of the common elements supporting Arabic music should 
live in the base include.

That of course presumes there are common elements between the two files. 
 If they are truly independent, I can easily understand why they should 
stand alone.  And if hel-arabic.ly is really what users *should* be 
including (meaning that arabic.ly offers little value), then we would 
want to discard the old arabic.ly and rename hel-arabic.ly to be 
arabic.ly with the better, straightforward naming.  (I must confess I 
have no idea what "hel" is supposed to be referring to, but perhaps I am 
just too ignorant of Arabic music where it has an obvious meaning.)


-- Aaron Hill