Re: Changing voice order...

[Simon Albrecht]

On 27.10.2016 13:40, David Kastrup wrote:
> This concerns << ... \\ ... \\ ... ... >>
>
> If we have more than one voice, voices are assigned in order:
>
> 1/2, 1/2/3, 1/2/3/4, 1/2/3/4/5, 1/2/3/4/5/6 ...
>
> while the documentation is quite explicit that, ordered from top to
> bottom, assignments should be more like
>
> 1/2, 3/1/2, 3/1/2/4, 5/3/1/2/4, 5/3/1/2/4/6 ...

That should rather be

1/2, 1/3/2, 1/3/4/2, 1/3/5/4/2, 1/3/5/6/4/2.

VoiceOne is almost the topmost, and the innermost get the highest numbering.

> namely keeping the small voice numbers for the inner voices.  Now I am
> sort of afraid that changing this is likely to end pretty disruptive to
> existing scores.  Even though I don't know how many really use the
> original ordering unchanged as well as intentionally.
>
> Thoughts?

The current mechanism at least provides consistency between the 
\voiceOne, \voiceTwo… command names and the order in << \\ \\ >>. And I 
don’t see how strict top-down numbering would be less confusing in 
general. Indeed, I think that the current rules make a lot of sense, 
once one has gotten the idea.

And as you said: this is a hugely disruptive change. How could backward 
compatibility be achieved? Maybe using something like

#(use-oldstyle-voice-numbering)

on top level at the beginning of the file.
IMO it’s definitely not worth the enormous hassle.

Best, Simon