Re: [OT} Was "Re: Rounded beams"

[mskala]

On Thu, 17 Dec 2015, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> I just read through the Essay in its entirety, and found nothing which
> suggests to me that Lilypond ever sacrifices clarity or functionality
> for "visual artistry”.

That is not what I said.

A focus on creating beautiful output does not imply "sacrificing" clarity
or functionality.  On the contrary, it seems reasonable to guess that
clarity and functionality are best served by beautiful output, that is
part of what beauty means in the context of music engraving, and the
"Essay" asserts such a claim throughout.  There's also a specific point
made near the start about exact alignment of bar lines between systems
being bad.  Assertions about "beauty" and "art" are repeated constantly
in that document, to the point that it sometimes comes across as
protesting too much.  The "Essay" is unconvincing for that reason even
though I agree with most of the points it's trying to make.

It seems strange that exactly straight beams in all cases without
exception are good and necessary for LilyPond, if exact alignment of bar
lines is bad and the avoidance of alignment is something to brag about.
And excluding the possibility of curved beams in all cases, even as a
manual override for scores with special nonstandard needs, in the context
of a tool that attempts to cover a wide range of other unusual notation
cases, seems to be a sacrifice of "functionality" right there.  For what
purpose is LilyPond making that sacrifice?

It may simply be a technical limitation, and that may be the right
decision in relation to costs and benefits:  adding a curved-beam feature
would be very difficult in the current architecture, and the number of
users with a reason to want it may be vanishingly small, so that the work
isn't justified.  I'm not sure anyone in this discussion actually wants to
use curved beams themselves, and there would be (laborious, but possible)
ways to do it with more general graphics features if someone really did
need it.

But don't claim that such a technical limitation is for our own good!

The statements that LilyPond doesn't do curved beams because users aren't
smart enough to use such a feature wisely (when LilyPond can do plenty of
other things that also look bad if misused, and has never been nor claimed
to be a safe tool for the unwise) and LilyPond isn't about visual art
(when there's a whole "Essay" stridently insisting that it is about visual
art) are hard to credit.

-- 
Matthew Skala
address@hidden                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/