Re: [Lilypond-auto] Issue 2505 in lilypond: Patch: Doc: NR clarified \footnote command as a TextScript

[lilypond]

Updates:
        Cc: address@hidden

Comment #24 on issue 2505 by address@hidden: Patch: Doc: NR clarified  
\footnote command as a TextScript
http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=2505

Ok, I am officially an idiot.  When I proposed using a postevent, I had  
only thought about notes and rests, but footnotes may appear in a number of  
other places.

And something like
\breath <>\footnote #'BreathMark ...
is decidedly ugly, and
\breath c'\footnote #'BreathMark ...
is even breathtakingly ugly.

Changing \footnote back into a normal music event does not mean that it  
can't, in general, not be used as a postevent, you just have to remember  
writing - before it.

Another possibility would be to let it actively _take_ a music argument and  
be a music function (like \tweak except for argument order).  Then we would  
have
\footnote\breath #'(2 . 3) "Zis iz a brezmak"
\footnote c2 #'(1 . 2) "A c note"
<c \footnote e #'(0.4 . 3) "a third">4
c-\footnote -3 #'(3 . 2) "a fingering"

This would have the material to footnote always in a fixed position and  
would rarely if ever require specifying a particular grob.

While it would be possible to have the material to attach to follow at the  
end (like with \tweak), I think it is a bit more natural to use the above  
order, and it turns out that the parser is up to it nowadays.

Yes, I know, critical issue and everything.  Sue me.  I'll probably have to  
revert the merge commit for the previous footnote change in issue 2518, but  
that should work out reasonably well as long as _this_ patch has not been  
committed.

Oh, and this argument order won't work for an automatic convert-ly rule.   
For an automatic convert-ly, the argument to attach to would have to be  
last, so that would be
\footnote #'(2 . 3) "Zis iz a brezmak" \breath
\footnote #'(1 . 2) "A c note" c2
<c \footnote #'(0.4 . 3) "a third" e>4
c-\footnote #'(3 . 2) "a fingering" -3

The internals are very much the same, so I'll start working on it.  But  
there should be agreement on the syntax.  I like the first variant better,  
but it means we (and everybody else) have to convert \footnote use manually.

The second variant would likely _mostly_ continue to work.  Hm.  Perhaps  
that is not good enough anyway.