Re: [oll-user] Finally, the revised instructions - please review!

[Janek W. <lem...@gm...>]

Sorry for somewhat delayed reply - i had to focus on the paper we're
preparing for LAC with Urs...

2014-01-27 Marc Sabatella <ma...@ou...>

> On 1/26/2014 5:35 PM, Janek Warchoł wrote:
> > I agree with you that a good engraving program should not need manual
> > breaking.
>
> This makes no sense to me.  I thought I gave a pretty clear explanation
> of why manual line break decisions are inherently subjective and why
> good human engravers often *need* to take responsibility for these
> according to the specific requirements of the situation.  I suppose in
> some contexts it might be OK to just let line breaks fall where the
> program defaults say they should, and of course in those case, it is
> reasonable to expect that the results would look "good" in some sort of
> general sense.  But I don't find merely looking vaguely "good"
> acceptable for my own work, nor do the publishers I have worked with
> accept that.  Both I and the publishers I have worked with have pretty
> specific - and mutually exclusive - ideas over how we want our line
> breaks to fall.
>
> For instance, there are two different publishers I have worked with
> where one can find examples of the exact same piece of music engraved by
> both of them, but they have different line breaks.  [...]
>

I see your point: there's a lot of variation in how a piece may be broken,
and there is never only one "proper" way to break it.

However, i restate my opinion with the following explanation:
I believe that both publishers you mention had some reasons to break the
lines the way they did it, and that these reasons could be written down as
a set of precise rules (although i'm pretty sure that such rules would be
very complicated and subtle, and *very* hard to express formally).
Assuming that these "line-breaking styles" _can_ be quantified, the ideal
notation program should provide general settings that would allow to choose
how the lines should be broken.  I.e. in an ideal notation program you
should be able to say "break these lines according to Baerenreiter house
style" (i.e. use a global setting) rather than having to specify breaks
manually.

Of course I admit that such a feature is extremely advanced and virtually
non-existent among currently existing notation programs.  So, we indeed
have to use manual breaking quite often.


>  > I was thinking about asking participants to prepare two versions of
> > the engraving - one with default line breaking of their program, and
> > one with the line breaking the same as in the original engraving.
> > However, as Marc wrote, this would be very inconvenient, as some
> > participants would have to make all adjustments in two versions (well,
> > this actually demonstrates that these programs have a serious weakness).
>
> Again, I don't really follow.  In the examples I gave, it isn't anything
> about the program that makes it necessary to perform manual adjustments
> twice - it's inherent in the nature of the types of adjustments that are
> affected.


I don't agree, i.e. i believe that this is not inherent in the nature of
adjustments - at least some of them.
You mentioned that you have to adjust staff distances after determining
line-breaks, and if the line-breaking changes you have to redo the
adjustments.  I believe that this is a deficiency of the program, i.e.
ideal notation program would automatically adjust staff distances so that
you wouldn't have to correct them when line breaking changes.

However, some tweaks indeed have to be redone if line-breaking changes.


> That is to say, command line programs would be just as
> affected as any WYSIWYG program (if not more so) - assuming they need
> manual adjustments at all, of course.


Yes, being command-line or GUI doesn't have much to do with it.


> So indeed, a program that requires
> fewer adjustments has the advantage.  But assuming a program requires N
> adjustments, performing those adjustments for two different sets of line
> breaks means potentially N*2 adjustments.
>

Yes.  That's why i believe good notation software should have as low N as
possible (let's say, in the range of 3-5 adjustments per page).

 > Oh, and by the way: i think that "adjusting global layout settings"
> > should be moved before adjusting line breaks - it wouldn't make sense
> > otherwise.
>
> Not necessarily.  In many contexts - such these challenges where we are
> explicitly supposed to copy line breaks - what may make most sense is to
> first decide on the desired line breaks, then choose global layout
> settings that achieve the optimum balance between readability and use of
> space within that constraint.  And in my experience, there is usually
> some give and take here.  That is, one chooses the line breaks one
> thinks one wants, one chooses global settings to produce optimal results
> within those constraints, then one re-evaluates one's line break
> decision based on whether the optimal results for those constraints are
> reasonable or not.  Again, this is not a software-specific observation.
> It applies equally well to WYSIWYG and command-line programs as well as
> hand engraving.
>

Ok, you're right here.  Choosing staff-size, margins and line-breaks should
all be in one step.  I'll change the instructions.

best,
Janek
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