Re: es means ees???

[David Kastrup]

Richard Shann <address@hidden> writes:

> On Tue, 2014-10-07 at 09:50 +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> Richard Shann <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>> > On Tue, 2014-10-07 at 11:04 +0900, Graham Percival wrote:
>> >> On Mon, Oct 06, 2014 at 01:41:30PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> >> > Richard Shann <address@hidden> writes:
>> >> > 
>> >> > > Here, instead of ees, is written es.
>> >> > 
>> >> > I read
>> >> > 
>> >> >     In Dutch, aes is contracted to as, but both forms are accepted in
>> >> >     LilyPond. Similarly, both es and ees are accepted. This also applies
>> >> >     to aeses / ases and eeses / eses. Sometimes only these contracted
>> >> >     names are defined in the corresponding language files.
>> >> 
>> >> Yes.  In case anybody was wondering, I deliberately moved the "as"
>> >> and "es" contractions from the tutorial into the NR ages ago.  For
>> >> people unfamiliar with that notation, it's easier to remember
>> >> "letter name plus -es or -is" rather than introducing all the
>> >> contractions.
>> >
>> > That was a good idea I think. What is unfortunate is that the default
> [...]
>> 
>> > But this is a very minor thing, perhaps as a matter of style the ly
>> > directory code should avoid the contractions?
>> 
>> I'd consider that bad style.
>
> Thinking about it, this "bad style" is the one recommended by the
> LilyPond documentation, since the changes Graham introduced into the NR
> ages ago. It lead to me being unable to read a LilyPond file without
> consulting the note-names-in-other-languages section, which you don't
> expect to need to do when this isn't an "other language".

Then we should rectify this.  I don't think that would need more than a
single sentence.  I think it is a bad idea when one LilyPond user cannot
read a simple melody pinned down by another user without getting
confused.  LilyPond is not a write-only language but also a means of
communicating and cooperating.  For better or worse, the default
notename language is Dutch and so people should know what to expect when
exchanging music with musicians working with Dutch note names.

I think that \language "english" comes closest to the idea of
"artificial but convenient language" because of the inherently bad
"natural" English note names that nobody wants to use when writing down
melodies.

-- 
David Kastrup