Re: Advice on naming and structuring scholarLY commands

[N. Andrew Walsh]

Pedantry Corner: the *active* verb that Elaine is seeking is actually "comprise." As in, "the committee comprises representatives from various disciplines." The verb in the opposite direction is "compose:" "representatives of various disciplines compose the committee." "Composed" can be used in passive voice to have a similar meaning to "comprise," which does not take a passive voice. On the other hand, Garner points out that "consist in" is the proper construction when referring to intangible components, as in: "the engraving standards of the Lilypond system consist in the ideals of good typography, ease of use, and robustness of information preservation."

But on the larger point, my understanding of the \consists command is that the "of" ("in"?) is simply elided. 

-A

On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 8:59 AM David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:

Flaming Hakama by Elaine <address@hidden> writes:

> This is probably tilting at windmills at this point,
> since we seem to have adopted this language,
> both in LilyPond and in the ee.
>
> But, from the perspective of our terminology reflecting English language
> usage,
> I feel compelled to point out that "consist" and "consisted"
> are not used in English as active verbs.
>
> Yes, these do work in the passive, or in the past tense.
> As in "my meal consisted of steak and potatoes",
> or "my meal consists of steak and potatoes".
>
> But you would not say, "I consisted a meal of steak and potatoes", nor
> would you say, "I consisted parsley to a meal of steak and potatoes."

So you are complaining that our use of the verb does not match the
description of some naturally occuring entirely different phenomenon?

> But when using it as a word, it does not parse well:
>
>> When an engraver is consisted to a Voice or Staff or similar context
>> only properties created through overrides are visible to the
>> acknowledger while tweaks seem to be hidden. However, if I consist the
>> engraver to Score also tweaks are recognized.
>
>
> Here is a usage of the \consists command:
>
>   \context {
>     \Staff
>     \consists Mark_engraver
>     \consists Metronome_mark_engraver
>   }
>
> To convey what this does, it would be more along the lines of
> "Create a Staff context that consists of a Mark_engraver and
> Metronome_mark_engraver".

Which forms a grammatical statement which, when interpreted at its
grammatical meaning, is factually utterly wrong.

> I mean, you could say that, but it does not make sense to a native
> English speaker.

Which is better than making wrong sense.  It makes obvious that we are
using a non-standard sense of the word borrowing from the meaning of the
reserved word in its context of LilyPond rather than the natural world.

> In this sense, if commands are to be read as verbs, maybe we should change
> the command name.
> Is there a reason why we couldn't use \with, or \add ?
>
>   \context {
>     \Staff
>     \with Mark_engraver
>     \with Metronome_mark_engraver
>   }

\with is taken.

>   \context {
>     \Staff
>     \add Mark_engraver
>     \add Metronome_mark_engraver
>   }
>
> I think that conveys more clearly what is happening.

Not really: that remains something to look up in the documentation.

Now I'll readily admit that \consists / \remove does not make for an
appealing antonym pair.  I'd be leary after all this time of turning a
common word like "add" into a reserved word even though "remove" is not
better in that regard.  But at least it has the advantage of being
established.

--
David Kastrup

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