Re: Proposed new available and recommended behavior of \relative

[David Kastrup]

Olivier Biot <address@hidden> writes:

> I have mixed feelings regarding the proposed syntax update of
> \relative.
>
> Treating the first pitch of \music in \relative \music differently is
> not intuitive and will likely result in octave errors.

Treating the first pitch of \music in \relative is _absolutely_
_unavoidable_ since the very _definition_ of relative pitches means that
each pitch is specified in relation to the previous pitch, and the first
pitch _has_ no previous pitch.

So the first pitch will _always_ be special-cased.  With a reference
pitch, it is special-cased to refer to that absolute pitch.  Without a
reference pitch, it has to behave in _some_ manner as well.

> Personally I think that
>
> c'' \relative { ... }
>
> is more intuitive than
>
> \relative c'' { ... }

music functions don't look back into context, and if they are in
variables, they don't even _have_ context.

> and could be made to work even when no starting pitch has been
> specified, where the default LilyPond pitch would apply (IIRC c' as
> starting point).

The default LilyPond pitch.  If you personally think that could be made
to work, I am looking forward to your sample implementation.

Or actually even a coherent and comprehensive human-readable definition
that could be placed in the manual and would make it possible for a user
to predict LilyPond's behavior without experimenting.

-- 
David Kastrup