Re: Forced accidentals and octave check

[David Kastrup]

Joram Berger <address@hidden> writes:

> Dear developers,
>
> is there a reason that the forced accidental must not be written before
> the octavation? It took me some time to figure out which order does compile.
>
> (a) This works:   cis'!='
> (b) This doesn't: cis!'='
>
> However, I would consider (b) more logical as the exclamation mark
> forces the "is" to be shown and the octave check checks the octavation.
> In (b) the tokens with a related meaning would be closer together. Is
> this done on purpose?

The octaves are part of the pitch, so option (b) is not feasible.  For
your stated reason, I'd have considered
(c) cis'='!
a more logical order.  However, the grammar contains the rule

simple_element:
        pitch exclamations questions octave_check maybe_notemode_duration 
optional_rest

I don't really know the motivation for this one, likely just a choice
made in historic times without particular reason.  I don't know whether
there are any documents using !? as well as octave checks (octave checks
are rather rarely used).  So I don't know how feasible it would be to
change this at the current point of time, and I don't know whether
people would be significantly more happy with option (c).  It is,
apparently, not what you would have considered more natural: at least it
does not occur in your proposed list.

-- 
David Kastrup