Re: preliminary GLISS discussions

[Graham Percival]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 08:50:35AM -0300, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> It would be helpful to have a comprehensive overview of what would be changed.

That's why I wanted to make sure that proposals are in "good
shape" before discussing them on the main list.  But there seems
to be general consensus that we want to discuss all proposals here
anyway, so I can roll with that.

> For example, I understand that requiring '-' for every post event
> would simplify the parser. At the same time, it is not clear to me
> what benefit simplifying that part of the parser will bring us.

- people writing automated lilypond importers or exporters
  (including algorithmic composition)
- people reading/writing lilypond scores manually (see below).

> Is there a complete proposal of what is on the drawing board?

Not yet.

> Barring that, is there a list of (perceived) problems in the
> current syntax/parser?

Not yet.

> Before we go around proposing solutions, it would be good to know what
> problems we are trying to solve.

For the specific example of post-fix modifiers,

  a4 \parenthesis b c d
  a4 \staccato b c d

Which note is parenthesized?  Which note has a staccato?  other
than memorizing all lilypond commands and/or experimenting for
each command, how can the user determine the difference?
with a post-fix sytax, it's much more clear:

  a4 b-\parenthesis c d
  a4-\staccato b c d

The initial proposal was that all "modifiers" should be postfix.
i.e. the syntax is
  NOTE-NAME DURATION -(any modifer to that note)
That could simplify syntax highlighters, converters, etc.  A more
extreme version of this thought is to use explicit delimiters for
modifications, i.e. something like
  a4 b4{ \staccato }

David pointed out that this would look extremely weird for music
functions such as \relative, so Janek and I are re-thinking the
proposal.  Jan threw out the idea that music functions could be
denoted with a different symbol, i.e.
  @relative {
    a4 @parenthesis b c d
    a4-\staccato b c d
  }
but that was just an off-the-cuff remark after 30 seconds of
thought.  It may or may not be a great idea.


These ideas are obviously not fully "fleshed out", but this makes
a good example of the meta-discussion of how we want to organize
the discussion of such ideas.

- Graham