On 2024-01-12 15:58, Knute Snortum wrote:
At least section 1.2.2 of the reference manual ought to be updated to
include <> in the discussion of invisible rests.
Can you share how you would want that section changed? Or I could
take a stab at it, but it may not be what you want. Also, <> can be
used for a lot of different things that aren't rests, so maybe that
section of the Notation manual is not the best place for it.
Agreed! In fact it's not a rest but the empty chord construct should
rather be seen as a placeholder without any duration, to which you can
attach things that normally are attached to notes. The question is where
to best describe it in the manuals. If you search the full manuals for
<>, the construct is used in several examples without any explanation,
but there are also a few places where "empty chord" is described in
conjunction with special cases of how to use it (see the entries for
"chord, empty" in the Lilypond Index). In A.15 there's even a reference
to the learning manual,
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.25/Documentation/learning-big-page#structure-of-a-note-entry, which unfortunately doesn't seem to explain it either, even though the construct is used in several examples also in the learning manual.
Perhaps one suitable place could be Sect. 1.3.1 of the NR "1.3.1
Expressive marks attached to notes", but it could also be worth
mentioning in 1.7 "Editorial annotations", for example. Technically,
Sect. 1.5.1 "Chorded Notes" is the natural place to describe it, but
that's probably not the most obvious place to look when you don't know
about the construct.
/Mats