Re: Proposed new available and recommended behavior of \relative

[David Kastrup]

Federico Bruni <address@hidden> writes:

> Il 07/03/2013 20:06, David Kastrup ha scritto:
>> The idea is that \relative { ... } (namely \relative used without an
>> explicit reference pitch) uses the first note inside as the reference
>> pitch.
>
> I like this idea, as it makes the input a bit cleaner.
>
> For those of us who are used to the old way, it may seem confusing,
> since we are used to think that all the notes inside the relative
> block are relative to the absolute note _outside_ the block.

Well, the new mnemonic would be "first pitch after \relative is
absolute" and that works for both
\relative c'' { f g a}
as well as
\relative { f'' g a }
equally well.

It obviously does not work for the second \relative in

\relative c'' { \relative { r r r } g }

but then nobody likes a smartass.

And I should know.

> But this new idea looks straightforward to me and I think that new
> users will understand it immediately.

So far, the response has been quite a mixed bag.  So here is how I think
we may proceed on this.

a) stop any further use of the current \relative { ... }
   That's issue 3231.
b) Implement new proposed behavior for \relative { ... }.
   That's the ly/music-functions-init.ly part of issue 3229.
c) give this proposed behavior equal coverage in the passages talking
   about absolute and relative pitches in Learning and Notation.
   Impact: a handful of paragraphs.
d) wait and see.

I don't really have a good idea how some kind of voting process would
look like where we get relevant feedback from a substantial number of
non-specialists.  For that it will be important that points a-c) are
done and hopefully available in a stable version.  That would make it
possible to get polls like Janek offered to do, from people outside the
constantly-updating community.

Objections to this course?

-- 
David Kastrup