Re: What is the problem with "\relative"? (Was: Do we really offer the future?)

[Steve Lacy]

+1 to Keith's idea. 

In fact, I remember first learning about \relative and being *amazed* that it didn't work as described. 

I'm mostly transcribing/re-engraving for solo violin, and most pieces stay within a small 2-octave range.  The \relative c'''{ ...} syntax was exactly what I wanted. 

Steve

On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 7:57 PM, Keith OHara <address@hidden> wrote:

Federico Bruni <fedelogy <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 2015-04-23 9:21 GMT+02:00 Martin Tarenskeen <m.tarenskeen <at> zonnet.nl>:
>
> I often use LilyPond to quickly enter a very simple tune or small
pianosheet needing just a simple texteditor (Vim). I use \relative all the
time. c g c e g is soo much faster and easier than c''' g'' c''' e''' g'''
g'''.
> And personally I find lilypond code in \relative mode easier to read.
> I agree that for complex scores with much music in variables \relative mode
can have annoying side-effects.
>
> I agree: relative mode is much easier to enter.

What if we compare relative mode to absolute mode with repeated 's removed?

Is
  \relative c''' { c g c e g }
easier than
  \transpose c c''' { c g, c e g}
?

I find it easier to remember that a note is below the middle octave in
the range of an instrument, than to remember whether the previous note was
more than three scale-steps away.

We can easily define a shorter way to express the transposition by octaves
  \absolute c''' { c g, c e g }
and it is not too hard to change the 460 examples in the manual that have
an implicit \relative c' {} or relative c'' {} to copy/paste-able music.

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