Just another boring question about manual cautionary accidentals...

[Valentin Villenave]

Hello everybody,

after having spent months (if not years) wondering "why the hell has
it to be the way it is?", today it's finally time for me to ask here
if anyone knows any logical answer to the following question:

The most basic syntax, in LilyPond, is:

notename/accidental/octave/duration, right?
==> example: fis''2

So, if I understand correctly, all accidental-related stuff comes
right after the note, but *before* the octave indication.
Then why, when you want to add a cautionary accidental, do you have to put:

notename/accidental/octave/cautionary/duration
==> fis''!2
instead of

notename/accidental/cautionary/octave/duration
==> fis!''2

and why has the later to cause the compilation to crash?


Some of you might answer that since cautionary accidentals are not
mandatory, it makes sense to put them afterwards, like one would do
with expressive marks (wrong example: expressive marks come after the
duration; the cautionaries are the *only* stuff which have to come
between the octave and the duration).
But you have to admit that it makes sense to put all
accidental-related stuff together, such as fis!''2 (it's so natural to
me that every time I write cautionaries, that means in every bar, I
use this syntax, launch the compilation, and have to tell me "oh,
right, I forgot"... before correcting it).

I'm not asking to change the whole LilyPond syntax of course; but is
it unreasonable to ask if LilyPond could accept cautionaries before
*and* after the octave indication? Or at least, ignore it and go on
with the compilation?
It wouldn't break anything, and it would make the syntax much more
flexible and tolerant. It already is, in many ways:
spaces-insensitiveness, ties notation where you can put the tildes
wherever you want, bar checks when you want, and many cool features.

Valentin