Re: Quit [now definitely O/T]

[Joe Neeman]

On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 22:33 +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
> Carl Sorensen <address@hidden> writes:
> > The code to establish a ritardando could be easily written, and may (or may
> > not) be done as part of the forthcoming GLISS (Grand LilyPond Input Syntax
> > Stabilization) project.  There's currently some disagreement about whether
> > it would be good to define
> >
> > spannerText = 
> > #(define-music-function (parser location span-text) (string?)
> >   #{
> >       \override TextSpanner #'(bound-details left text) = #$span-text
> >   #")
> >
> > which would allow above example to be coded much more easily in the input
> > file
> >
> > \spannerText "rit."
> > b1\startTextSpan
> > e,\stopTextSpan
> >
> > but would hide the underlying LilyPond functionality (the \override)
> > and make users less likely to learn how to do overrides that they may
> > need to do for their own challenging music.
> 
> What is wrong with
> b1\startSpan "rit."
> e,\stopSpan
> 

If proper semantics and MIDI are the eventual goal, you will probably
need something like \startRit and \stopRit instead. This suggests the
need for some C++ work, since Text_spanner_engraver currently only
allows one spanner at a time, so
b\startRit c\startSpan "foo" d\stopRit d\stopSpan
would act strangely if \startRit used TextSpanners internally.

Joe