Re: Changing voice order...

[David Wright]

On Tue 01 Nov 2016 at 17:11:30 (+0100), David Kastrup wrote:
> "Phil Holmes" <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > ----- Original Message ----- 
> > From: "David Kastrup" <address@hidden>
> > To: "Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden>
> > Cc: <address@hidden>
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2016 2:42 PM
> > Subject: Re: Changing voice order...
> >
> >> There are by now two components to my proposal: fading out \voiceOne
> >> ... \voiceFour since they _never_ correspond to voices 1/2/3/4 in a
> >> four-voiced context but to voices 1/4/2/3.  And changing the meaning of
> >> << \\ \\ \\ >>.
> >
> > I'm concerned by this.  I don't believe I have ever used more than 2
> > voices in choral music: typically the sops/tenors get voice one, and
> > the alto/basses get voice two.  If any of these is doubled (e.g. sop1
> > and sop2) then they are shown as chorded notes, still in their normal
> > voice.  If it gets more complex than this, then current vocal music
> > almost always resorts to a stave per vocal group.  It looks to me like
> > the proposal would end up with voiceTwo having upstems.
> 
> Nope.  What is now called \voiceTwo would be renamed to \voiceDown or
> something of that kind.
> 
> > I am very much against that.  It would mean I would have to update a
> > lot of music to make it usable.  I don't use concert-ly 'cos I find it
> > a pain on Windows.
> >
> > Who uses four voices on one stave in vocal setting?
> 
> Using the current meanings of \voiceOne...\voiceFour, you'd get the
> following assignments:
> 
> << \voiceOne \\ \voiceTwo >>
> << \voiceOne \\ \voiceThree \\ \voiceTwo >>
> << \voiceOne \\ \voiceThree \\ \voiceFour \\ \voiceTwo >>
> 
> So the assignment of the \voiceXXX-like settings depends on the number
> of \\ and you cannot deduce the settings before you actually know how
> many \\ constructs are present.  For two voices, your main use case, the
> behavior will be absolutely identical.
> 
> Now the Voice contexts are still going to be assigned sequentially as
> "1"/"2", "1"/"2"/"3", "1"/"2"/"3"/"4" (nothing else makes sense really).
> So in order not to cause confusion by having "1"/"2"/"3"/"4" correspond
> to "One"/"Three"/"Four"/"Two", I want to rename the \voiceXXX constructs
> as well.  The old ones will be available still but no longer promoted
> and/or documented prominently, instead using something like \voiceUp,
> \voiceDown, \inner \voiceUp, \inner \VoiceDown ...  Those names are
> still accurate when more than two voices are involved while the relation
> between name and behavior for \voiceTwo becomes tenuous as soon as more
> than two voices are involved.

I would hate   \inner \voiceUp   and would suggest

\voiceTop \voiceHigh \voiceLow \voiceBottom instead¹.

It is unfortunate that you have to look ahead so much with << \\ \\ \\ >>
but that comes with the territory. One more tentative suggestion I
would make, to keep things slightly simpler, is to ban << \\ \\ >>
so that you have to explicitly put << \\ {} \\ \\ >> or << \\ \\ {} \\ >>
for three voices, which at least means there are only two structures
to deal with.

¹ why not \voiceTop \voiceUp \voiceDown \voiceBottom ? Well, you could
end up with \voiceUp having stems pointing down, which would be confusing;
ie Up/Down are overloaded, whereas Top/High/Low/Bottom only convey their
(unambigous) position in the staff.

Cheers,
David.