Re: preliminary GLISS discussions

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 2:19 PM, Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Manual writers:  can we make up our minds here? I've always been
>> against frivolous syntax for shortcuts (one example in particular is
>> the "q" for repetition).  Why do we put in "q" for users to save some
>> keystrokes, and at the time propose to require a mostly redundant '-'
>> in front of zillions of postevents?
>
> Right, and getting rid of q would be quite hard.  Why not have your
> favourite editor (Emacs in lilypond-mode, JEdit or Frescobaldi) do
> the right thing, ie, copy the previous note/chord when you type q?
>
> The introduction of q says: we favour writing over reading.  What
> do we find important?  Better readability, saving keystrokes,
> stability...?
>
>> The question is starting off on from the wrong premise.
>>
>> * the command is called \parenthesize. It's a verb, and I don't think
>> we have any postfix verbs
>
> Fortunately, we probably chose verbs for music functions, although I'm
> not sure all music functions are verbs?

Yes, I noticed that - it would be good to make all functions operating
on arguments be verbs; similarly, \times could be renamed to something
more verby.

> Wouldn't it be helpful if from the syntax one could tell functions from
> postfix operators simple statements?  In most languages function
> invocations are easy to spot.  I think in Perl you can have functions
> look like dead statements, but that's probably just making the argument
> better.

<offtopic>I find it interesting that you are giving Perl while we are
discussing readability.</offtopic>

-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen