Possible feature request for 'q' shorthand or tie syntax

[Jim Long]

A humble suggestion....

Please educate me if there is already a way to do this, but it
appears that 'q' as a shorthand for the repetition of the
previous note(s) only works for chords.  It would be handy if it
worked for single notes also, specifically in ties.

  \time 12/8
  \partial 8
  aes8
  des,4. ~ q4 aes'8  d,4. ~ q4 a'8
  des,4. ~ q4 aes'8  d,4. ~ q4 a'8


For that matter, it would be nice (though I suspect more
syntactically problematic) for subsequent notes in ties to only
require a duration, since by definition the pitch has already
been specified in the first note of the tie.

This might be written as:

  \time 12/8
  \partial 8
  aes8
  des,4.~4 aes'8  d,4.~4 a'8
  des,4.~4 aes'8  d,4.~4 a'8

Flipping that around, it might (or might not, I'm not qualified
to say) be syntactically convenient to define a 'compound
duration' as one that includes two or more simple durations
separated by tildes.  In the above example, the pitch is 'des,'
and the duration is '4.~4'.  In 4/4 time, 'a2' takes up the same
time as 'a4~4' but of course in the notation, 'a4~4' is two notes
tied, and 'a2' is a single note.

I think this helps the readability to show that it is one pitch
of a given duration tied to a second duration, and conceivably
more:

Here the long C has a duration of '1~1~2~4~8', and the final
c has an implied duration of 8 since that is the duration of the
note preceding it in the notation.

  \time 4/4
  \partial 16
  c16
  c1~1~2~4~8 c

Instead of the current syntax:

  \time 4/4
  \partial 16
  c16
  c1~c1~c2~c4~c8 c



In chordmode:

  \time 4/4
  bes4~16:m7  ees16~8:7  aes2:maj7


Perhaps this idea has plenty of holes, but I think I would enjoy
learning from the discussion.

Thank you for your time,

Jim