On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 12:16:49PM -0400, Kieren MacMillan wrote: [...] > > Probably the biggest problem I encounter with \relative is when I > > enter some music and then extract a section of it into a variable > > for use somewhere else and having the original shift octaves > > somewhere in the middle. Then I have to search for the shift and > > correct it. > > That was the straw that broke my camel’s back so many years ago. I > find it particularly bad if you try to compose or arrange directly in > Lilypond (as opposed to simply transcribing or > engraving-from-written-MS): write the first section, write the third > section, then write the second section and the third section “becomes > wrong”; fix that; try to cut-and-paste a chunk from Section 2 into > Section 3, and both the new section *and* the rest of the piece > “become wrong”; fix that; etc. When this plays out at higher > resolution, I find it endlessly maddening (and flow-killing). [...]
It's somewhat mitigated by inserting octave checks every so often (say, at the start of every section), so that when it does go wrong, there's a warning, and the problem only propagates up to the next octave check rather than the rest of the piece. That's what I do, anyway -- I also compose directly in Lilypond. Octave checks are also the first warnings that come up, so my usual practice is to interrupt Lilypond as soon as I see an octave check failure, fix it, and repeat until no more warnings come up. Of course, I know your stance has been very clear all these years, so I'm not going to try to convince you. :-) But just wanted to say that there *are* ways to mitigate the problem, and that I find \relative still extremely useful in tonal music. T -- Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue. -- Yoon Ha Lee, CONLANG
