Bryan wrote "I know you've been away Laurie but this has been discussed at some length for over a week now. A variety of people have given their reasons and examples. Perhaps if you would care to read the whole thread you could come up with specific reasons why you disagree and why you think "shortest determines length" is better."
I did read the whole thread. I saw suggestions for 1. "highest note prevails" - but this is broken and was abandoned. 2. "first note prevails" with Jack Campin immediately saying " but the semantics I'd need in every instance where I've wanted it would be that the *shortest* note counts". 3. "shortest prevails" The Rapunsel example from Eric Forgeot seemed to require this 4. None of these (Phil: "Using unequal notes in chords just leads to too many ambiguities"). A reply from Bryan saying "Noteworthy Composer does it..." but not saying what rule Noteworthy uses. Care to tell us? What rule does Noteworthy Composer use to determine when the next note starts after a mixed chord? John Chambers voted for "first-note prevails" Henrik voted for "shortest prevails" and gave an example of a fiddle tune (Målargubbens brudpolska) which requires "shortest prevails". Toni Schilling suggested a length on the end [c4e]2 which seems to have caused confusion as some people thought that "ought" to mean c8e2. Bryan said 'the default behaviour without a following number would need to be the "first-listed note" but did not explain his reasoning - seems to me that "shortest prevails" works best. AbcMus implements "shortest prevails" Jack Campin floated "absorptive " ties. Bryan said "I think it needs to be recognised that the [...] construct isn't going to cover all possibilities. Anything more complex will need separate voices, possibly combined on one staff." but did not produce any counter example to demonstrate the point. John Chambers said "There is a lot of abc that would give strange results from the shortest-note rule.". and at that point I got back from Sidmouth and joined in. There have been two examples given (Rapunsel and Målargubbens brudpolska) both of which were "shortest prevails". The most powerful argument for "first prevails" is John's "there's a lot of ABC that needs it". Some idea of just how much would help. It seems to me that 99% or ABC falls into the two categories of "no written-out chords at all" or "all notes in a chord are the same length". The printed piano music that I have seen seems to reply on "shortest prevails" (it often also uses beams and other layout clues to connect up notes into voices but when these fail it falls back on "shortest wins"). To do something different in ABC is liable to cause confusion. Although it is true that ABC is a language in its own right, it's liable to cause confusion when it is needlessly different from staff notation. I'm still in favour of "shortest". Laurie To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
