Re: Proposed new available and recommended behavior of \relative

[Jacques Menu]

Hello Folks,

I'm rather new to Lily, and I don't have any cons/pro arguments about this 
change.

After reading the various reactions, a question : why not augment the language 
with a new keyword?
Could be \relativeanchored or something, and would avoid the need for doc, 
snippets and existing user files changes.

Sorry if I missed some fundamental point behind the design of Lily...

Le 7 mars 2013 à 20:06, David Kastrup <address@hidden> a écrit :

> 
> Please take a look at
> 
> Issue 3229: Patch: Make \relative { ... } interpret the first pitch as
> an absolute one
> 
> <URL:http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=3229>
> 
> It's clear that this change will require quite a bit more work if it
> gets accepted, and it is important that we get user feedback before
> investing significant more work here.
> 
> The idea is that \relative { ... } (namely \relative used without an
> explicit reference pitch) uses the first note inside as the reference
> pitch.  That is, if the first note happens to be written as fis'' it
> will sound as fis'' (absolute pitch).  Using \relative without a
> reference pitch has previously been discouraged.  Its traditional
> meaning is to have c' used as default reference pitch, leading to the
> result
> 
> \relative { f' } -> f'
> \relative { g' } -> g
> 
> which is not necessarily helpful.  One rationale is to stop the
> "distribution" of the information for the first pitch to potentially
> quite separate places, like being able to write
> 
> \new Staff \relative {
>  \key aes \major
>  <<  % Voice one
>    { c''2 aes4. bes8 }
>    ...
> 
> instead of the previous
> 
> \new Staff \relative c'' {
>  \key aes \major
>  <<  % Voice one
>    { c2 aes4. bes8 }
>    ...
> 
> 
> Now the old behavior and recommended usage is _really_ old.  Few people
> use \relative without a reference pitch nowadays, so the amount of code
> in need of changing is rather small.  However, changing the
> _recommended_ way of doing things requires a lot of changes in LilyPond
> documentation (many of which can be done automatically as the current
> patch shows, but of course quite a few also requiring more manual work),
> and it will become visible quite thoroughly.
> 
> So the question is how LilyPond users feel about this, both seasoned
> users as well as newer ones: would this change make learning LilyPond
> easier?  Would it feel more convenient/logical in the long run?
> 
> The actual change in semantics are just a few lines in
> ly/music-functions-init.ly.  But doing just that change alone would be
> pointless if it's not enough of an improvement to actually change the
> documentation extensively and recommend this use.
> 
> How do people feel about this?
> 
> -- 
> David Kastrup
> 
> 
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--

Jacques Menu
Ch. de la Pierre 12
1023 Crissier

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