Re: slur to 2 alternatives

[David Kastrup]

Reinhold Kainhofer <address@hidden> writes:

> On 2012-09-26 00:25, David Kastrup wrote:
>> Urs Liska <address@hidden> writes:
>>> before you try this out, please search for a \shape Slur function.
>>> We discussed it here on the list, but as far as I know it is now also
>>> built in.
>>> It _massively_ simplifies the handling of the control points.
>>> And judging from your screenshot you will need it because it can
>>> correctly handle the parts of a broken slur.
>>
>> Incidentally: was there a rationale for making it an override rather
>> than a tweak applied to a slur or phrasing slur?
>
> Probably because the first kind of "hardcore" default-modification
> that we teach newcomers are overrides. We hardly ever mention
> tweaks. In fact, even I am usually using \once\override instead of a
> \tweak, which would be much easier and more correct in most cases.
>
> It's simply that I have got used to overrides, but not to tweaks.
> The other reason in my case is that sometimes I need two or more
> overrides at once, which I store in a variable ("poor-man's command")
> or I need a parameter, so I need to use a music function. AFAIK, both
> cases cannot easily be done with tweak...

Care for an example?

> Another reason against tweaks is that they tear apart the note and the
> articulation, so that it is much harder later on (during the
> proof-reading phase) to read at a glance.

Well, but if you have things like an appoggiatura and a slur, you will
not likely want to shape both (granted, I don't have a good idea how to
shape the appoggiatura separately).

Slurs are sort of a so-so for picking override over tweak since we
conflate several slurs at the same timestep into a single one, and if
you are in a situation of conflation (as the partcombiner sometimes
produces), the override is at least certain to catch the survivor of
this conflation.  However, in case of double slurs, it will catch both,
which in the case of a slur shaper is unpretty.  And when the spanner-id
feature is used for producing several separate slurs at the same time
step, they will also all get the same shape.

Overall, I would lean towards making it a tweak with an optional music
argument to operate on.  If that argument is replaced by \default, one
can still produce an override instead.  In general, I am against us
producing \once\override automatically, but here the non-\once variant
is not likely to be of use.

-- 
David Kastrup