Re: Concepts that may be missing (or are at least hidden) in LilyPond

[Carl Sorensen]

On 4/26/15 10:55 PM, "Andrew Bernard" <address@hidden> wrote:

>
>In what way are measures missing? Half the world calls them Œbars¹ by the
>way - that¹s what they are under in the index. Are you simply referring
>to terminology in the documentation?

LilyPond creates bars (the things that divide measures) just fine.
LilyPond has a Timing engraver that keeps track of the current time within
a measure (so you get warnings if you place a bar check that doesn't
coincide with the end of a measure).

But if you look, for example, at the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI), they
have a container called the measure, which contains musical elements over
a certain period of time[1]. So notes are placed into measures.
Presumably this then allows a text parser to search through the data
schema, find measures, and eliminate them.

LilyPond has no data structure for a measure.  The only timing
relationships in the LilyPond model are sequential (one note follows a
previous note) and simultaneous (two notes start at the same time).  The
full timing of the score is worked out by Iterators when the score is
produced.

There are some advantages to the LilyPond way of doing it.  LilyPond
easily supports different time signatures in different staffs.  Music is
easily copied, because it has no absolute timing information.

There are also disadvantages to the LilyPond way.  It is common for people
to think things like "the crescendo should cover measures 2-4".  There is
no way to express this kind of relationship in LilyPond.

I'm not convinced that LilyPond should add a "measure" object to its
language.  But I am convinced that LilyPond really doesn't have the
concept of a "measure" object in its schema right now.

Thanks,

Carl

1. http://music-encoding.org/documentation/guidelines2013/cmn#cmnMeasures