Re: Substitute for s1*0

[David Kastrup]

"Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote Sunday, May 06, 2012 2:57 AM
>
>> In fact, isn't <> generally prettier than s1*0?  Should we be using it
>> in code and documentation rather than s1*0?
>
> Definitely prettier, but maybe not so transparent as s1*0.

I disagree.

Quick: tell me what you would expect without too much thinking (imagine
you are a naive user) from the following:

\new Staff <<
  \relative c'' { c4 d e f s1*0-\markup Oops c d e f g1 } \\
  \relative c' { c4 d e f <>-\markup Wow c d e f g1 }
>>

That's not really a competition, is it?

> It is not intuitively obvious that an empty chord takes no
> time and does not affect the current duration, rather than
> being equivalent to an s, which of course takes the current
> duration.  
>
> Perhaps both should appear in the documentation, with a
> word of explanation.  Users can then choose which they prefer.

Multiplied durations are an advanced concept.  I prefer leaving their
explanation for the cases where they are required rather than
introducing them as a "meme" with side effects quite beyond those
intended for the meme.

There would be a reasonably good case for letting the "current duration"
in the parser always retain a factor of 1/1 instead of the fully
multiplied duration.  Or only consider durations with factor 1/1 for
duration tracking in the parser.

It would most likely almost always be more useful.  It would also be
less consistent.  In contrast, making <> be invisible to q is a rather
minimally invasive change which also makes sure that the total time of
music does not change because of expanding repeat chords.

-- 
David Kastrup