Re: short instrument name setting

[Daniel Hulme]

On Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 08:47:41AM -0500, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> I avoid \tag at all costs — and suggest the same to other users, and  
> warn newbies against it (or don't introduce them to it in the first  
> place) — because it FORCES THE MIXTURE OF CONTENT AND PRESENTATION,  
> which is A Bad Thing™.

No, it allows you to add free-form *semantic* information to your
content definition, just like you can by assigning music expressions to
variables. \keepWithTag and \removeWithTag allow the presentation
definition to read this semantic information and make presentation
decisions based on it.

> If there's another (non-\tag) way to do the same thing, that's The  
> Better Way™.

If, for a specific presentation feature, there's another way to turn
that feature on and off that doesn't require extra annotations in your
content definition, then certainly, that's the better way in that case,
but \tag is a powerful and general way of letting the user specify
arbitrary extra data. This allows presentation decisions to be made
where the presentation is defined, removing the need to inspect
presentation options from within the content.

-- 
Mary had a little sprout,        From week to week, from month to month,
Its fleece was green as grass,               She kept the sprout in tow,
She hitched it to a bit of string,        And everywhere that Mary went,
The silly little ass.                         The sprout was sure to go.

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