Summary of \tuplet debate

[Jonathan Henkelman]

OK, I'm starting to have a hard time keeping all the pieces together.  I'll 
try and summarize the discussion so far.

There seems to be general consensus:
- that having both \times and \tuplet is unnecessary and confusing.  It should 
be one _or_ the other.
- that \tuplet is clearer than \times due to the similarity with \time (?)
- there is not much support for the \triplet construct.
- There is not much support for \tuplet 3 {...} due to it's ambiguous nature. 

Can we agree on that much as a start?

So items currently in debate are:

1) What will happen in the case \tuplet 3:2 {c8 d e f g a}
- currently with \times it prints two beamed groups of notes with a '3' 
spanner over the whole affair (is this rather unintuitive to anyone else?) 
- We need debate on what the default behaviour here would be (i.e. as it 
stands or producing two standard triplets as would be expected by \tuplet) - 
I'll keep my personal opinions out of this summary.
- I would assert that getting the default behaviour as close to what 
the "median" musician might want is going to simplify the learning curve.  
Leave the scheme programming to those who are more advanced.
- From the programmers and others who like to think about these things - What 
would be the ramifications for other musical constructs in the case we change 
the default behaviou?  i.e. are we digging ourselves into a hole somewhere 
else?

2) To what extent is simplicity of grammer going to define the functionality.
- There seems to be a general trend that both \tuplet 3:2 and \tuplet 2/3 are 
wanted. Others feel that trimming the grammer is going to be a good thing in 
the long run.
- Han-Wen has proposed a compromise (well to change the idea a bit) the those 
who want the old \times 2/3 functionality could get it through a macro and the 
new specification could stand alone. 
- We need more debate (or concensus) on the final form.  I think it is good to 
keep this discussion outside personal preference. We should also discuss how 
this fits into the current language context. (e.g. Mats' assertion that we 
should keep the music semantics seperate from the typesetting).

3) If the tuplet command ends up just being the same as times except with 
a ':' notation (meaning divide) instade of '/' have we accomplished anything?
- There is a growing voice suggesting not.
- If we make the syntax optional perhaps so.

Jonathan