Re: No R in input! (Proposal for discussion)

[David Kastrup]

Simon Albrecht <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello everybody,
>
> once again I find myself typesetting ancient music, which poses
> special challenges with regard to separation of content and
> presentation. Right now, I’m talking about the fact that bar lines are
> an editor’s decision and not part of the musical content – different
> editors might place bar lines after a breve, a semibreve, none at all,
> or only inbetween staves.
>
> This means amongst others that in order to use the same music source
> for different editions, it should not be hardcoded which rests are
> MMRs and which aren’t. Also, I don’t think there’s any ambiguity in
> the following translation: Every rest which fills one or more entire
> bars should be treated as a MMR by the typesetting engine.
>
> Thus, I would like to deliver a plea to perspectively abolish the
> distinction between r and R in LilyPond source code and have the
> engravers handle the difference.
>
> This would also get us rid of one possibility to make mistakes in engraving.
>
> I had this idea right now and it feels too convincing to me to
> actually be as good as it seems. Hence I’d love to hear your
> opinions. What complications are there (aside from the effort of
> implementation) that I fail to see?

Polyphony can become rather awkward to read if some voice has a full bar
rest while another has material.

{
    << c''1 \\ R1 >>
}

Formatting is completely different (multi measure rests are spanners!),
so articulations etc will behave surprisingly if LilyPond switches on
its own initiative.

-- 
David Kastrup