Re: Proposed context property renaming

[Trevor Bača]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 4:15 PM Saul Tobin <saul.james.tobin@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I mean it's not a Lilypond specific construct. Duration log + augmentation
> dots is a music notation construct that Lilypond faithfully represents
> using a type named duration. I don't think there's any inherent reason that
> representation of musical time is more deserving of the name duration than
> what we're calling musicLength. In English, we don't have a separate word
> to distinguish between those concepts. But it's important to be transparent
> which type is expected by a given property. It does users no favors to hide
> complexity under the rug if they will trip over it as soon as they get
> advanced enough to start tweaking output via Scheme.
>
> Kieren earlier spoke in favor of whatever is most comprehensible to users.
> To me, musicLength seems completely clear and unambiguous. Unless there's a
> proposal that accomplishes the same thing while also being more elegant, I
> don't really see the argument against it.
>

Please step outside LilyPond for a moment.

Do you see books written about music and musicians, or about music theory,
using the phrase "music length"?

When you spend time with a score, getting ready to analyze it, do you look
at the "music length" of notes and rests on the page?

If you were going to write about a piece of music to a friend or colleague,
would you write about the variety of "music lengths" you find in the piece?

-- 
Trevor Bača
www.trevorbaca.com
soundcloud.com/trevorbaca