Re: Changing voice order...

[Alexander Kobel]

On 2016-10-28 14:52, David Kastrup wrote:
> Alexander Kobel <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > What about \voiceUp<Digit> and \voiceDown<Digit>? Where the former are
> > counted from top to bottom, and the latter from bottom to top?
>
> I prefer it if a LilyPond source is readable without explanations.  That
> makes it much easier to learn by example and feel confident about it.
> It also makes stuff like Frescobaldi document templates work better.  If
> the template appears to make sense, people are more comfortable using it
> (and remembering and reproducing it) rather than when there are
> strangenesses in it.

+1.

> And using numbers that run top to bottom for one
> half and bottom to top for the other just are again the kind of
> weirdness I wanted to avoid with a different scheme in the first place.

Granted.

> > So the current \voice<n> becomes \voice<n%2 ? Up : Down><ceil(n/2)> ?
> > Or \<ordinal>FromTop and \<ordinal>FromBottom?
>
> Somewhat better.  But I consider it somewhat inelegant if \twoFromBottom
> is for bassoon I and \oneFromBottom for bassoon II.

Ordinal: \secondFromBottom, \firstFromBottom. Even a little bit better 
IMHO. But still not the holy grail, I agree.
I cannot see a better solution right now; but I'm open to pleasant 
surprises...

> > > So does
> > >
> > > << topmost \\ 2nd from top
> > >    \\ { \inner \inner \voiceDown topmost stem-down }
> > >    \\ middle stem-down \\ bottom stem-down
> > > > >
> > >
> > > Basically you need to only fix those voices not obeying the standard
> > > scheme (usually just one) and the rest will work out.  So I don't really
> > > think that a special syntax is needed.
> >
> > True. But isn't the point of this shortcut notation that it saves you
> > the trouble of specifying those directions and voice names on your
> > own?
>
> Sure, but you talk about a case where one _has_ to specify a direction
> and voice name after all because the default does not work.  Admittedly,
> yet another shortcut saves you from figuring out what level of \inner
> (or whatever) you have to use.

Indeed. By the way: what is intuitive also depends a lot on what music 
you engrave. If you have two-part violin/bassoon/whatever parts, that's 
mostly obvious. In particular, the voices tend to exist over an extended 
range.
If you are talking about, e.g., piano music, it's not at all uncommon 
that voices vanish during the piece or pop up at random moments, or 
voices cross each other, and suddenly the meaning of what's 1st/2nd/3rd 
(or inner, middle and outer) voice as well as the preferred style 
(up/down) changes.
I guess that cannot easily be solved within the regime of that syntax. 
But maybe the construct should not try to optimize for such "hard" 
cases; that could be calling for trouble.

Anyway, the \\\ was a shot in the dark: without any idea about how this 
could be implemented (no idea there at all), and also without thinking 
of the long-term implications. Which leads to your last point...

> > Coincidentally, that's why I hardly ever use it: I tend to get
> > lost with the automatic assignment
>
> Well, which is why the automatic assignment should be as predictable and
> brainless and useful as possible.
>
> I think that the proposal in its current form is significantly better
> than what we started with.  But obviously we don't want to have such
> shakeups occur more often than absolutely necessary, so we should not
> just get something that's better what we started with but also not worse
> than anything else we can think of at the moment.

+1.


Cheers,
Alexander