Re: Constructive Criticism and a Question

[Brett Duncan]

Frédéric Chiasson wrote:
> My point when I started this topic was not to change the whole 
> definition of the \times function. In fact, I think the function works 
> quite well as it is. I was mostly talking about improving the 
> "interface" - i.e . the words and the syntax we use to call the 
> functions - to make it more intuitive, especially for a 
> non-programmer. The \times function was an example among other. I was 
> proposing to change it to \tuplet x:y, simply because it is closer to 
> the musicians' language (tuplet), and it reflects more the result we 
> see and we would write manually (3:2 or 7:5, even if we have 6 
> sixteenth-notes for the 7:5 in contemporary music).
The issue that's emerged out of this discussion, apart from the question 
of \times / \tuplet, is that some users (including myself) would like to 
see a more obvious (intuitive?) way of generating *sequences* of 
tuplets. As has been mentioned before, \times 2/3 { a8 a a b b b } 
doesn't produce two triplets, as you might expect, but six notes with a 
single bracket and a "3" over it - to get the desired result, it's 
necessary to add \set tupletSpannerDuration = #(ly:make-moment 1 4). For 
new users especially, this is a bit daunting IMO.

Changing \times x/y to \tuplet y:x may be more intuitive for 
non-programmer musician, but if they still have to use \set 
tupletSpannerDuration = #(ly:make-moment ...), I don't see that you've 
gained much.

For this reason, I think Erik's proposal of a \tupletSequence function 
makes a lot of sense. (Though \tupletSet is shorter to type.  ;-) )

Brett