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Re: Beam positions and time signature spacing


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: Beam positions and time signature spacing
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 13:40:23 +0100
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3.50 (gnu/linux)

Gilberto Agostinho <address@hidden> writes:

> Although I agree with you that these things are important, there are
> certain things that could make problems clearer and are not used. Ex:
> it is not standard to write a little "8" under the bass clef when
> dealing with Contrabass in a non-transposed orchestral score (where
> tranposing instruments, such as clarinets and horns, are written in C,
> but octave transposing instruments, such as contrabass or piccolo
> flute stay with their registers changed). This is my point here:
> standards. Even if something is prettier, simpler, nicer, it still
> shouldn't matter if there is a rule or standard behind. And I think
> that LilyPond should output things as close as possible to these
> standards, and then let the users who want to change things use
> \tweaks and \overrides.

I disagree.  LilyPond should output things as best as possible within
the framework of notation elements.

Elaine Gould is not a standard.  She is _the_ expert, and it is usually
a bad idea to go against expert advice when one isn't an expert.  But a
_description_ of existing practice is not the same as an _advice_ to
that practice.

> There is nothing wrong with LilyPond notation from an absolute point
> of view. In fact, it is actually better since it avoids potential
> collisions and misunderstandings (bar 8 could be mistaken for 8a
> symbol), as Janek pointed out.

Ambiguousness is not the only question.  There are also the question how
much vertical space is usually caused solely by the numbers, and how
easy they catch the eye even in bad lighting conditions (at the end of a
rehearsal regime, most of the score is important only as a general
reminder and patterning tool, but score numbers remain something you
need to look up explicitly).

> The problem is LilyPond is the only engraver I know who use this
> notation, and I think that we should not aim at "improving" notation
> standards, but at following them.

As long as the improvement does not need to be in quote marks, there is
nothing wrong with it.  "improve" is something different from "change":
naturally any disruption of accustomed reading by some change must be
very heavily weighed against the purported advantages.

> If we expect that LilyPond might become a option for publishing houses
> one day, I think we should keep this things in mind.

Never to be better than the competition?  Now if we take a look at _why_
LilyPond's placement is apparently not used elsewhere, there is a
reasonably simple answer: the numbers at the left edge stick out of the
central ArtBox defined by rough rationale "there is free margin space
beyond here".

That's _very_ friendly to the performer as it makes finding measure
numbers a breeze.  It is unfriendly to the page estate and consequently
to the printer, or any embedding tool

I have not heard printers complain, but we should listen closely.

And, of course, make it easy to change the behavior anyway.  But that's
about as far as one should go in my opinion.

-- 
David Kastrup




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