Re: spacer rest *

[David Wright]

On Tue 01 May 2018 at 00:15:24 (+0200), David Kastrup wrote:
> David Wright <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > AFAICT the important exception that was introduced with naked
> > durations was that c 4 notates a single note whereas c4 4 notates two.
> 
> There was no "exception" introduced.  c 4 always indicated a single note
> and c4 4 previously was invalid input.

There's no guarantee that a new user, or a user who has only set eyes
on notation like c4, will make the correct interpretation of, say,
c 4 4 4 when they first encounter it. Without looking it up, there's
no way of knowing whether LP would treat it as three notes or four.

So if a new user thinks that a naked duration always specifies a note
they're likely to see the first duration in c 4 4 4 as an exception.
The ambiguity didn't arise before as there was no possibility of
seeing such a string (without throwing an error).

Of course it wouldn't look like an exception to you or anyone who's
already familiar enough with LP syntax. But the OP's doubts concerned
learners and that's why my views diverge from theirs: I would prefer
a decision (concerning durations applying only to pitches) based on
power users rather than learners.

> > Thank goodness that my own canonical style is c4 d8 e16 etc and not
> > c 4 d 8 e 16 which makes erroneous naked durations harder to spot in
> > the source.
> 
> It's always a good idea to follow conventions.  Makes it easier to
> cooperate with people, makes for better starting points from templates
> and programmatically created LilyPond input (if only by using
> \displayLilyMusic) and gives convert-ly a better chance at working
> because conversion patterns tend to cater to conventions.

Agreed, but if one was used to converting midi to ly with rosegarden,
for example, one might easily form an opinion that c 4 d 8 e 16
is the conventional style.

> > As a singer, naked pitches like c4 d e are the norm (ie melody),
> > whereas naked durations c4 2. 8 are of more limited usefulness.
> 
> So?

Oh, just that I wouldn't miss naked durations if they hadn't been
introduced, so I don't think my opinion (expressed earlier) should
carry much weight. Apart from the OP, the only other view I've
seen concerned pitched rests and I can see that specifying a lot
of those might be made easier. As it happens, I hardly use pitched
rests any more because of improvements to snippet 336.

Cheers,
David.