Re: Disappearing barlines with skipBars - possible bug?

[Kevin Barry]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 2:38 PM, Mark Knoop <address@hidden> wrote:

> { \time 2/4 c'4 c'1 c'4 } % 3 bars, 2nd of which is empty
>
> { \time 2/4 c'4 c'2 c'4 } % 2 bars, neither of which is empty
>

At best I would consider these to be non-standard notation. At worst I'd
say it's incorrect. It's possible to write a note value longer than a bar,
but I don't think there is an accepted standard for notating that, except
for connecting smaller note values with ties. And as I said before I have
never seen it in a score (do you have any examples?).

skipBars is introduced in the Learning Manual (3.4.5 Scores and parts)
> as a way of condensing multi-measure rests. Its only references in the
> Manuals are regarding this function. I suspect its impact on notes
> crossing barlines is either unintended or at least not thought through


It's just used there as an example of a context property. I agree that its
behaviour for notes rather than rests might not be thought through (but it
/is/ mentioned in the IR so it may not be unintended). Normally full-bar
rests are condensed with \compressFullBarRests (which probably just sets
skipBars to #t, but I didn't check).

I can't imagine a situation where the current behaviour would be
> desirable (silently hiding a barline thus changing the length of a bar)
> and it would certainly seem to be a very different use case than
> condensing multi-measure rests.


I think the default behaviour (without touching skipBars) is ok, and agree
that there's no apparent need for it to affect notes (the possible scenario
with long notes and short empty bars seems implausible). So perhaps
skipBars could be changed to only affect rests, or at the very least a
different context property could be used as an example in the learning
manual (or both).

I verified that \compressFullBarRests does indeed affect notes as well, so
if you want to file a bug report then perhaps proceed on that basis.