Re: Changing voice order...

[Simon Albrecht]

Now I’ve read up the whole thread, I might add some clarification on my 
thoughts.

On 01.11.2016 11:42, Simon Albrecht wrote:
> 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.

Perhaps some ASCII art is a nice way of advertising the current logic:

X
  \       X
   \     / \   X
    \   /   \ / X
     \ /     X
      X

To my mind this makes a lot of sense. Another way to frame this virtue 
of the current way:

<< …voiceOne… \\ …voiceTwo >>
<< …voiceOne… \\ …voiceTwo… \\ …voiceThree… >>
<< …voiceOne… \\ …voiceTwo… \\ …voiceThree… \\ …voiceFour… >>

Adding more voices doesn’t turn everything else up. The progression from 
a two voice layout to a six voice layout is pretty logical, whereas with 
the new proposal of top-bottom-numbering something like this would be 
going back and forth in a way that is at least no better than the 
current snaky alternating between top and bottom.

One would almost never use something like
<< \sopranoI \\ \altoII \\ \sopranoII \\ \altoI >>
anyway – there would be lyrics involved and it very quickly becomes 
necessary to use two staves. For piano music however the alternating 
layout now used is quite sensible. Also, users already have the freedom 
to do things like

<<
  \new Voice { \voiceOne \sopranoI }
  \new Voice { \voiceThree \sopranoII }
  \new Voice { \voiceFour \altoI }
  \new Voice { \voiceTwo \altoII }
>>

There is great versatility available, and many possibilities to adapt to 
different situations.

> 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
>
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