Re: [Patch:] Negative fret numbers cause a warning (issue 1035)

[Marc Hohl]

Am 22.12.2010 09:48, schrieb Carl Sorensen:
> On 12/22/10 1:30 AM, "Marc Hohl"<address@hidden>  wrote:
>
> > Hello all,
> >
> > attached is a small patch to handle Issue 1035.
> >
> > Instead of giving an error, it raises a warning when negative frets
> > are calculated in tablature staves or in fret diagrams.
> Marc,
>
> If instead of being inside set-fret, this check took place in the form of a
> (string-qualifies string (note-pitch note)) check at line 455, we could
> issue the warning and then try to find a valid fretboard/tablature that
> would handle the pitch, assuming the string number was incorrect.  That way,
> we'd still have the note in play, and the string would be available for
> other notes.
>
> I think that's a more robust way to handle it than setting the negative fret
> number.
Hmmm - I wrote some tunes with a capo placed at the third fret but covering
only strings one upto five, so the sixth string still sounds with an open e.

I didn't wrote it down, but if I ever do so, I wonder whether the open e
would be written as fret number "-3" in tablature relative to the capo 
position.

Despite this rather artificial example, I don't know whether we should make
lilypond more "intelligent". Sometimes I did make some octavation errors and
spotted the erroneous negative numbers after printing the scores and handing
out the copies to my students (therefore way too late ;-) - the string 
number
was right indeed, but I forgot a "'".

So in this case a warning is enough for me to see there is something wrong,
and I don't expect lilypond to try to find out what I wanted to do or even
rearrange the notes/frets/strings - and perhaps I *do* want negative 
numbers ;-)

But that's my personal opinion, if you think we should make lilypond 
more clever,
I'll redo the patch.

Regards,

Marc



> Thanks,
>
> Carl