Re: LilyPond, Finale and Sibelius

[Carl D. Sorensen]

On 4/5/09 4:59 PM, "Valentin Villenave" <address@hidden> wrote:

> 2009/4/5 Han-Wen Nienhuys <address@hidden>:
>> Please come up with something different.  I think the idea to
>> use (for example) & as a place holder is much more sane.
> 
> As I suggested, if we forbid such standalone durations after anything
> else than an explicit duration, it would not break anything wrt
> whitespaces. -- But I agree that this is not quite "sane".
> 
> 2009/4/5 Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden>:
>> 
>> OK.  Then I vote for a letter like `q' as a repeater for chords.  `&'
>> is a bit cumbersome to type.
> 
> Well, the advantage of a non-letter char is that it's less easy to
> confuse it with a note... That being said, we already have  `r',
> meaning "rest" and `s' meaning "skip"... But what does `q' mean? :-)

I guess it could mean "quote" -- as in quote the previous object.

I like the idea of having it be a key that doesn't need to be shifted, or at
least isn't likely to be in some awkward place on some language's keyboard.

I think that the following unshifted characters are available:
q, w, t, y, u, i, o, p (although \p is used for dynamics), j, k, l, z, x, v,
n, m (although \mf and \mp are used for dynamics).

= would have the right meaning, but then we'd have two different uses for a
naked = character, so I don't think it is a good idea.

None of these characters jump out at me as being optimal. I think & is
somewhat mnemonic.  I think legibility should trump ease of typing, so I
guess I come down in favor of &, at least from the choices I've imagined so
far.

Of course, I still don't have any idea who is going to implement this, even
if we do agree on syntax.


Carl