Re: Do we really offer the future?

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi James,

> I think there's one command in Finale that demonstrates a major obstacle to
> widespread adoption of LilyPond: Delete Measure Stack. This is an extremely
> common need when editing scores, and raw LilyPond code offers no clean,
> easy way to do it.

+ 1 x 10^googol

This is such a good (read: damning) point, I can’t believe it hasn’t (as far as 
I konw) ever been made here before.

> LP input is structured horizontally, around voices flowing forward in
> time. Meanwhile, composers think in terms of chunks of time whose
> arrangement is vertical. (I don't intend this to preclude polyphonic
> thinking, but even Bach must have struck a whole bar now and again.)

I think in both directions at once when I compose.  ;)
But your greater point is certainly vaild.

> "So how do I delete bar 47 from this LP score?”

If you use \parallelMusic — which, for the record, I never do — it’s as easy as 
Finale’s Delete Measure Stack command.
Unfortunately (as you go on to explain), most of us write far more complex and 
abstracted Lily-code, for which there is no such easy procedure.

> We try to explain this away by saying that LP is an engraving tool,
> not a composition tool, but -- if we're really serious about making LP
> more attractive to the "average" user of notation software, this is too glib.

Agreed.

It will be interesting to see where your observation leads.

Thanks!
Kieren.

________________________________

Kieren MacMillan, composer
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: address@hidden