Re: Music for the Martians?

[Erik Sandberg]

On Thursday 23 November 2006 20:29, Arjan Bos wrote:
> On 23 nov 2006, at 3:10, Graham Percival wrote:
> > I think this is referring to people with 6-fingers.  Typing e8_1
> > means "first finger"; typing e8_"1" prints "1" as a TextScript.
> >
> >> But what are martians and why are they playing my music? Shouldn't
> >> this message simply state that a 6 is a strange number to indicate
> >> a finger with?
> >
> > Yes, but somebody was feeling creative when they wrote that
> > code.  :) What message do you propose to change it with?
>
> I thought about that and I know that it is non-sensical to have 6 in
> there as a finger indication. But I decided to put it in and it is
> right to put it in for my purpose, otherwise it wouldn't be in. So I
> feel that this message can be safely removed from lilypond. Oh, and
> 2.8 didn't have that message and I did not confuse myself with six
> fingers either there ;-)
>
> So please remove it, or if it is felt that it is a just message,
> please state that it something like:
> Warning: fingering notation for finger number <n>.

Maybe also add a constructive hint, something like:
 Warning: fingering notation for finger number <n>. Did you intend to use 
\markup?

> where <n> is greater than 5, or 4 depending on the instrument being
> described. In guitar music, we normally only deal with four fingers
> as the thumb is at the other side of the neck. So here it would be
> appropriate to give the message at finger number 5. Since it's
> clearly instrument dependent, and lilypond doesn't know about the
> instrument that the music is intended for, it is a strong indication
> that you cannot tell when to display this warning. So this is in
> favour of removing it.

BTW, I think I have heard of a professional pianist who had six fingers on one 
of his hands; he would have a valid excuse for writing 6. Luckily for him, it 
is fairly easy to manually \override Fingering.text to a similar function 
that doesn't give a warning.

-- 
Erik