Re: 13th chord?

[mskala]

On Sun, 26 Feb 2017, David Kastrup wrote:
> To me it would seem that the default mode of operation should be for
> them to have matched rules where feasible, in order to have least
> element of surprise.

I agree, but A. it may not be feasible in some important cases, and
B. even matched rules wouldn't really solve the problem, because users
would still have to explain to both the input and output systems their
own preferred conversion between note sets and displayed chord symbols.
(It doesn't help that the standard and traditional musical rules are
*screwy* and the nonstandard rules many people want to use are even
screwier.)

Users want what they type to match what is displayed, even when it doesn't
follow the default rules and possibly even when it doesn't follow any
rules.  For the common use case of chord mode being used solely to
generate notes for ChordNames, and ChordNames getting its notes solely
from chord mode, we don't really need the notes at all.  Just turning the
user's input directly into markup would make all the common problems with
chords disappear.

I've actually used lyrics to print chord names sometimes when I just
couldn't get "proper" ChordNames contexts to do what I wanted.  It seems
like lyrics are 80% of the way to the markup idea I'm describing.

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