Le 13/11/2021 à 04:21, Flaming Hakama by Elaine a écrit :
So, I guess for me this is a 2- or 3-part trick question.The first is, how is the usage of \time different in lyrics than anywhere else? Frankly, I was not aware that using \time inside lyrics was a thing. What is the reason to use \time inside lyrics? It is a suggested practice, is it the only way of doing certain things? If it is interpreted differently in lyrics than elsewhere, is that a pattern that we want to keep? Or should we fix it so that it behaves the same in both contexts? The second has to do with the example syntax. I don't suppose it will change your use case, but just to be clear, I was proposing it might be possible to distinguish a number from a duration by using {} So, for one thing, you used it in the numerator where I was suspecting it would only ever appear in the denominator, so it would be more like; \lyrics { \time 4/4 + 4/{8} } But really, that was just for doing a shorthand notation, I was not formally proposing that syntax. Rather, I was rather suggesting that it be used in the syntax of \lyrics { \compoundTime #{{4 4) (4 {8})) } I suspect that using {} to distinguish number from duration is still not going to cut it in this usage, either. But I suspect that there could be some other kind of way to modify either the data type (number vs string?) of that denominator argument so that it was clear which representation was intended.
Elaine, I'm sorry if it came across as a 'trick question'. It was certainly not meant such. My point was merely that -- independently of the specific case at hand here -- there are technicalities that cannot be avoided. So I was trying to explain why LilyPond developers may make decisions of syntax that sometimes even them would like to see differently if only considering the intuitiveness, and not the special cases, the programmability, the possibility/ease of writing good error messages for invalid input, the flexibility of the parser tooling, etc. I don't have much to add, and the discussion is already well-furnished, so I won't comment further on the specific topic for now. Kind regards, Jean
