Re: Tangled up in Lilypond syntax

[Aaron Hill]

On 2019-03-27 4:19 pm, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> That’s great… But essentially all of the documentation has \relative
> at the top-level. So what is a newbie to think, other than "My code
> should look like
>
> \paper { … }
>
> \header {…}
>
> \relative c' { … }
>
> But then they start to cut and paste code bits, or switch the order of
> voices, or any of a dozen other natural and intuitive operations that
> don’t imply ‘I’m destructive!!’… and then wonder why their music goes
> off the deep end.

Truly it is not "destructive", to be fair.  It at best is "chaotic", 
where there is a perfectly deterministic behavior behind the scenes that 
simply is not obvious at first glance.

And, that's a fault of the documentation but also the end user.  As with 
most things with computers, it is ultimately the responsibility* of the 
user to be willing to understand how a system works.  \relative is 
documented clearly enough that anyone who asks "Why is my music 
switching octaves?" is not honoring their side of the contract.  The 
notes shift because \relative depends on context; and 
cutting-and-pasting is going to change that context.

That said, I fully agree with advising folks who intend on moving music 
around more fluidly to avoid \relative since it adds a maintenance chore 
that would otherwise impede the creative process.  And there does seem 
to be an over-reliance on \relative in the documentation, to the extent 
that folks are certainly biased to use it.

Largely, I adopted \relative simply because pitches on the treble staff 
would otherwise require at least one apostrophe.  I have considered 
dropping \relative in my own works, replacing it with something like 
"\transpose c c'" so that I can at least minimize the use of octave 
punctuation.  So while I can definitely see the advantage of being more 
explicit with octaves, I desire more to avoid excessive redundancy.


(* Side rant: One of the worst offences the computer industry committed 
was convincing people that computers were better than humans.  Over the 
decades, users have been trained to accept the computer "knows best" and 
not to employ their own reasoning.  Much (proprietary) software out 
there relegates users to be slaves to the machine--George Jetson pushing 
his button.  In an ideal world, the computer is a tool to help us do our 
jobs more effectively; but that necessitates that we are the master.  
But with that role comes responsibility to understand how things work.  
Granted, not all of us have the time to devote to the idiosyncrasies and 
minutia of managing individual computers much less a large network, 
which is why good IT will still be critical to success.  But the end 
user must be encouraged and empowered to own their device.  At the end 
of the day, the computer must work for the person; not the other way 
around.)

-- Aaron Hill