Re: absolute pitch entry: accept an offset octave (issue 235010043 by address@hidden)

[Simon Albrecht]

Hello Wol,

most of this has been discussed already:

Am 08.05.2015 um 20:40 schrieb Wols Lists:
> On 07/05/15 16:19, Paul Morris wrote:
> > > On May 7, 2015, at 10:43 AM, Paul Morris <address@hidden> wrote:
> > >
> > >   \relative [optional pitch] { ...
> > >   \absolute [no pitch] { ...
> > >   \octave [obligatory pitch] { …
> > >
> > > The downside with this is that \absolute is really just a subset of the 
> > > functionality of \octave, but they have different names.  \octave c {… is the 
> > > same as \absolute {…
> > Here's another possibility with just two modes:
> >
> >    \relative [optional pitch] {…}
> >    \octave [obligatory pitch] {…}
> >
> > And then just use \octave c {…} instead of \absolute {…}.
> >
> > In most cases one would simply use plain {…} for absolute-entry and would only 
> > need to use \octave c {…} when embedding inside \relative {…}.
> >
> > (Hmmm… I think I prefer this approach over the others.)
> My first reaction on seeing all this was "why are we using a pitch?"
> Doesn't lily store notes internally as a duplet of an octave and a
> pitch? (forgive me if I'm wrong, that's what I remember from my dabbling).
The entry for ly:make-pitch in 
<http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/notation/scheme-functions> 
has an explanation on the pitch data type in Lilypond, which comprises 
three numbers. Only the last one (for alteration) is optional. Even more 
so, as David K. pointed out, it’s not possible to represent a 
stand-alone octave mark like ,, in scheme, so it has to be a complete 
pitch with note.
> So I'd be inclined to have just the two modes ...
>
>     \relative [optional pitch] {...}
>     [\absolute [optional octave offset]] {...}
>
> and obviously then \absolute would be optional too unless you're using
> the octave offset.
Without \absolute, a music expression will be affected by any enclosing 
relative. This is why \absolute was introduced (not so long ago), to 
avoid any such influences.
>   So when I'm entering my music in the bass clef I
> would possibly do something like
>
>     \absolute -1 { c d' e' b }
Using a number as the first optional argument was discussed already.
> which simply shifts everything down one octave. That then also saves any
> explanation about what [obligatory pitch] means. Does it have to be a
> new reference C? What happens if you said, for example, e'? Does that
> get understood by lily as c' - shift everything an octave? Or does it
> mean "the note above e' absolute is entered as f', the note below is
> entered as d"? Specifying the shift as a number makes it clear that it's
> relative to the default c', and that's it.
We had all this already. It would be a mess to allow for notes other 
than c, so we definitely won’t be doing that.
I’m not sure why using a number wasn’t really considered, though. 
Probably for analogy to the other music entry modes?

Yours, Simon