Re: GOP2-3 - GLISS (final)

[David Kastrup]

Janek Warchoł <address@hidden> writes:

> On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 8:07 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> In general, yes.  But some aspects of our syntax haven't been
>>> around for a long time -- footnotes, woodwind fingering, compound
>>> meters, etc.  Do we have the best syntax for those?  I mean,
>>> maybe David can figure out a way to allow us to write
>>>   \compoundMeter (3+2)/8
>>> or simply
>>>   \time (3+2)/8
>>> instead of
>>>   \compoundMeter #(3 2 8)
>>
>> I'd have done so already, but \time takes an optional beatstructure
>> argument that is indistinguishable from a compound meter, being a number
>> list.
>
> Sorry, i don't understand.  You mean that you know how to do this, but
> there's something else blocking you from implementing it?

If two different things are indistinguishable, you can't have them both.

If (3+2)/8 is shorthand for #(3 2 8), then (2+2)/2 is shorthand for
#'(2 2 2) and
\time #'(2 2 2) 6/4
already _has_ an assigned meaning.

> Anyway, from my point of view (user-friendliness obsession) this would
> be fantastic!  I'm ready to pay 25 euro for being able to use \time
> (3+2)/8 (without any additional hashes, quotes etc) as a legitimate,
> fully-supported meter command.

It would have been 3+2/8 at any rate since throwing parens into the
token syntax would have further messed up the ambiguities, and forms
like 3/2+2/5 would not likely have worked.

-- 
David Kastrup