Re: Changing voice order...

[Trevor Daniels]

Simon Albrecht wrote Tuesday, November 01, 2016 10:42 AM

>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.
              always?

>> 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.

I agree with Simon.  I don't agree the proposed change would be clearer.

> 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.

Definitely not worth the hassle.  Far better would be to concentrate
on improving the documentation, if it is thought that is not clear
enough.

Trevor