[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> > Nitpick: a4 does not *produce* a quarter note a, it *is* a quarter
> > note a. Converting it produces the *graphic* note (a symbol) or a
> > *midi* note: there is a subtle difference in declaring things (like a4
> > does) and converting them, which is the function of the \paper and
> > \midi block.
>
> Counter-nitpick: When I write "a4" I there's no quarter note anywhere.
> There are only bits in the computer. What is a quarter note exactly?
> Is it sound? Is it the graphic representation in standard musical
> notation? Maybe it's an abstraction that links the way we write music
> and the way we perform it? I'm not sure what the answer is, but it
> seems clear to me that bits in a computer are not a quarter note.
> Perhaps the best way to describe what happens is to say that a4
> represents a quarter note.
To me a note is a sound of with a pitch and a duration. The a4 is
read into a structure describing pitch and duration.
> Now why does anyone care that "a4" represents a quarter note? I doubt
> most people care because they are impressed by the existence of an
> abstract representation; they care because when they run the right
> programs, they can produce audio or graphical output of the quarter
> note. They care because when they process the representation in the
> appropriate way, a quarter note is produced. The production of a
> quarter note is the purpose of the representation.
Now you are guilty of just giving examples and being vague. Mudela
was formed to represent our idea of what "musical definition" is.
That is why I like to say that a4 (or rather, the associated numbers)
*are* a note.
This information can be manipulated. At this time, the only useful
manipulation is running LilyPond on it. But in essence there is no
reason that that should be the only one.
But my insistence on keeping this strict separation between definition
and presentation is this: most people have only communicated music
(communicating is reading and writing) through notation. IMNSHO
notation is *not* a good method for *defining* music. The meaning of
notation is not well defined, and has more or less evolved in 1000
years to a rather complicated system. So, when you want to teach
people about entering mudela (ie., defining music), I would like to
avoid mentioning this broken system (notation) for defining music.
And when you say
> The production of a
> quarter note is the purpose of the representation.
then you should take a look at Haskore,
http://haskell.systemsz.cs.yale.edu/haskore/. Haskore uses a data
model that looks quite like mudela, and there it is used to perform
all kinds of transformations on pieces of music.
> When you write a program in C, the word "if" doesn't do anything. The
> behavior of the C program is a function of the compiler which converts
> that "if" into machine language. Does this mean that it's wrong to
> say that the word "if" produces certain behavior?
> I don't think it's
> really wrong. A C program is not very interesting in the abstract as
> a representation of an algorithm, and that's certainly not how people
> regard C programs.
I was going to reply to this, but it would take the discussion away
from music typography and definition, and into a weird mix of language
and philosophy.
Let me conclude by saying that you have convinced me that the tutorial
needs more work to be easily readable, and that I will keep your
comments in mind while rewriting it.
[bar numbering]
> So what should the average user need to know? I think that the
> average user should know how to either type
> include "bar-numbering.ly"
> or maybe
> \numberbars
> or some other shorthand. Perhaps the internals should be more hidden
> than they presently are.
The whole syntax for notation-context fiddling should be changed.
Some ideas have been brewing in my head for some time.
> (Out of curiosity, is it normal to print the number at the start of
> every line? I would have expected printing a number every "n" bars to
> be more normal.)
I've seen it more often than printing every N measures. But feel free
to send in a patch to make this runtime tunable. It should be trivial.
> > OK. I was just nitpicking about internals: \melodic and \lyric
> > change the way in which strings are interpreted; the strings are only
[..]
> Inside \melodic, the parsing works to enable the convenient entering
> of notes. It so happens that no special duration handling is
> necessary. I'll bet if it was, you would implement it. (If you
> someday discover a reason for special duration parsing you'll probably
> implement it.)
As I said, it was a nitpick. Probably \notes and \lyrics are the
better names, although they are inexact.
> > > introducing quotes in TeX output.) These characters can be introduced
> > > by using the " to quote.
> > >
> > > And she said "``quoted" passsage starts, and ends''
> >
> > OK. That looks like a fine passage for putting into to the refman.
[..]
> So I went and tried to read the lexer code (even though I don't know
> anything about flex). It seems that the relevant portions are:
OK. Time for the big revelation: I don't know every detail of the
code by heart. The NATIONAL and TEX stuff was added because of (and by)
non-English speakers on the list.
Your explanation is entirely right.
> I must admit that the way things are currently set up seems
> overcomplicated. Why not admit as a lyric anything that doesn't start
> with a number or whitespace and doesn't look like "\" followed by an
> alphabetic character?
go ahead!
> > \melodic \type Staff< .. >
> >
> > is valid as well (and normal jargon in mudela.)
>
> I agree that it's better to understand this your way.
>
> Note, however, that you just contradicted yourself by saying that
> \melodic takes an argument from the grammar and then presenting an
yeah yeah.
> Also note that the only reason to write the braces is to group them
> together into an argument so that \melodic knows how far to go. That
> this can also be achieved with < > characters doesn't change this.
I disagree. Again this is merely a different point of view: \melodic
doesn't know anything. It's just the definition of the langugea
> Here's an attempt at a grammar describing these things. I havn't
> tried to integrate \type or \property into this. They seem to have
> their own idiosyncratic syntax.
This is superfluous. Check out lily/parser.yy
> One last remark: yodl converts
> code(%{)
> into
> \texttt{\%\texttt{\{}}
> which produces a font error in latex and typesets the { in the wrong
> font. I don't know why, but \texttt seems incapable of producing {.
> It would seem preferable to produce
> \verb!%{!
> or maybe
> \begin{verbatim}%{\end{verbatim}
> instead. Or alternatively, figure out how to get the { to come out in
> the right font.
OK. Noted. I hope Jan fixes this.
> And here's a distantly related question: is there anything I can do
> with MIDI files on a Sun workstation? I have surfed the web but been
> unable to determine the answer to this question.
Surf the web looking for Timidity
>
>
--
Han-Wen Nienhuys, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** GNU LilyPond - The Music Typesetter
http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/hanwen/lilypond/index.html
