Re: [foo-devel] semitone/rational reader extensin & other

[Ramon Gonzalez-A. <ar...@ma...>]

Dear Sirs,

Some issues.

1) I don't think I have used the semitonal or the fractional readline 
possibility in the Foo sources. (I would have to check, but it is 
improbable). However, I have used them intensily in all my "music 
sources". Rationals should have been part of elk, since it is in the 
scheme report. Perhaps we could press the elk peaople, so.

Replacing the semitonal notation by a function is certainly not a big 
deal -of course there are already functions in Foo to deal with this and 
more refined related questions [Pitch.foo in ~/Control/Utilities]. Even 
more easy to change 1/3 by 0.3333.

The problem of course is that a function does not solve the problem of 
notation. One of our main concerns when doing Foo (and elsewhare) is 
that the way one expresses something should be as close as possible to 
the way one thinks it. And with this in mind you'll agree that 1/5 tells 
  much more than 0.2 (although in this trivial case it could be less 
dramatic). A proportion is a most important way of supplying data. In 
music as in many other arts proportions are paramount, and these 
elements of a description should stand clearly in the way one is 
formulating a(n artistic) statement.

As you probably see I have less of a problem with loosing the semitonal 
notation (since it is anyway a particular case (though of course not any 
particular one)), than with loosing rationals. That would be an extreme 
pity and I would love to have some more thinking about it, {and if you 
allow me some more pushing} before just wiping it out from our lives.

2) What happens with the Oops patch? Before oops patch, methods could 
have optional arguments. The oops patch prevents methods from using 
optional arguments. It doesn't give an error, it simply doesn't work. I 
sent Gerhard the other day an example of both cases. I think this 
problem is worth looking at it.

If I ask this is because both the Node as the Abstraction classes use 
optional arguments in their methods. I have cleaned the Node from 
optional arguments, although the documentation has to be changed. But 
the Abstraction is quite another question. Therefore I see at least 
three levels of control sources:
-The old sources with their optional arguments and whatever (working, by 
the way, in Martin's first implementation (when removing the oops patch))
-The strict new implementation of the old sources. Adapted to oops.patch 
or probably better to new ELK (whatever that may mean : cleaning up of 
optional arguments, cleaning up of semitonals and rationals, etc.)
-The new developed sources with the new ideas and changes; new classes, 
new structure, whatever.

I think it would be very interesting to have at the developers site 
these three levels very clear. I think with the kernel we have a very 
similar situation. And of course with the Documentation.

Well, that was it for now. All the best,

Ramon