Re: Do we really offer the future?

[Michael Hendry]

On 26 Apr 2015, at 15:36, H. S. Teoh <address@hidden> wrote:

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 10:23:26AM -0400, Kieren MacMillan wrote:

Hi,

Am I the only one who puts bar checks at *both* the beginning and end of a bar?

| a4 b c d |
| e f g a |

You’re the only one I’ve ever heard of doing so.   =)
Exactly ½ of your bar checks are redundant, of course.

[...]

I realize it's redundant, but I use it as a visual aid. :-)

I like formatting my input in paragraphs of 4 or 8 bars each, and having
a visual marker for both the start and end of a bar lets me easily tell
where a bar starts / ends when its contents don't fit on a single line
(or is more readable wrapped to multiple lines):

| a4 a a a |
| a4 a a a |
| a4 -\tag #'no-partcombine -\f
    -\tag #'midi -\ff
 a a a |
| a4 a a a |

| b4 b b b |
| b4 b b b |
| b4 b b b |
| b4 b b b |

... etc.

In the 3rd bar above the trailing | lets me immediately see that the end
of the bar is on the 3rd line, and that the previous two lines are
incomplete, whereas if I only wrote | on one end of the bar, it would
take more effort to scan with my eye to find the bar boundaries.

I’m not convinced that you gain any benefit from using the bar check at the beginning of the bar, if your’e going to put one at the end.

Have a look at this...

a4 a a a |
a4 a a a |
a4 -\tag #'no-partcombine -\f
     -\tag #'midi -\ff
  a a a |
a4 a a a |

b4 b b b |
b4 b b b |
b4 b b b |
b4 b b b |

…where the beginnings of the bars line up vertically, and any bars which spill over on to the next line are indented. Does it lose anything from not having leading bar checks?

I used to use bar checks in what seems to be the logical place - at the end of the bar - but I found it awkward to run my eye down a ragged column of trailing bar checks. I felt the need to tab them across until they lined up, which was just a waste of time.

I think this...

| a4 a a a
| a4 a a a
| a4 -\tag #'no-partcombine -\f
     -\tag #'midi -\ff
  a a a
| a4 a a a

| b4 b b b
| b4 b b b
| b4 b b b
| b4 b b b

…is neater and involves less tidying up if any bar needs to be edited.

I don’t think the extra compilation time for two bar checks per bar is likely to be an issue, but the time taken to produce a tidy-looking .ly file is lower with the bar checks at the starts of the bars.

Just my opinion, of course!

Michael

T

--
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -- Brian W. Kernighan

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