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Re: sharping naturals


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: sharping naturals
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2015 14:20:24 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.0.50 (gnu/linux)

Robert Schmaus <address@hidden> writes:

> I wasn't being rude,

Rudeness is determined at the receiving end of a communication.  The
best you can say is that you did not intend to be rude.

> just reminding the guy what his patron saint considers to be
> "objective, absolute, and immutable truth". Which everyone's free to
> believe ... as long as they keep it to themselves.

And then I have my problems even reconciling that with what you write
here.

> Rude would be to badmouth guys (like you & me) for trying to help -
> the advice on SE was pretty much the same as from the list - because
> they suggested that you might not understand what you're doing.

LilyPond's notename philosophy happens to be from a culture remote from
the English speaking world.  In Dutch or German, you never, ever, would
call a "cis" anything other than "cis".  It's not a "c sharp", namely
some qualified "c".  That's a totally different note and name.  There is
no such thing as a "c natural" when talking about notes.  It's either
"c" or not.  You don't need to specify the key signature when discussing
a chord: all note names are absolute.  Always.

LilyPond is internationalized in that it offers English notenames, but
it does not offer the accompanying notename philosophy.  And the
fuzziness coming with such a philosophy is not helpful in the context of
a computer description of music, so it's not all that likely that this
will ever change.

But that does not mean that other philosophies are only entertained by
idiots, so there is no necessity of letting that kind of vibe come off
here.

The best advice with regard to dealing with LilyPond's notename
philosophy is to get used to it.  LilyPond editing tools may give offer
some of the efficiency advantages of more flexible naming philosophies
without having ambiguities creep into the resulting input text.

> As for tolerance: I agree I shouldn't have made the remark in the
> first place. This is not the place for it, so sorry to everyone for
> the extra mails. But the Pius Brothers are about as tolerant as the IS
> when it comes to anything outside their "objective, absolute truths"
> (note the plural), so I simply couldn't suppress the urge.

This mailing list is not the place for trying to propagate your
religious affiliations.  People are invited to communicate here about
LilyPond without having to hide their gender, religion, nationality and
other parts of their identity.

It may be worth mentioning that one priest who was grateful for LilyPond
allowing him to prepare scores suitable for the eyesight of his older
brethren gave me some part of his modest remaining possessions when he
took his vow of poverty.

Different religious convictions do not preclude us from treating each
other with respect.  Even if it means suppressing your urges.  Let's not
forget that the whole idea of being civilized is not being a slave to
your urges.

-- 
David Kastrup



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