When setting vocal music, auto beaming is normally off, except during melisma. I find myself constantly writing:
\autoBeamOn <A>\melisma ... <B>\melismaEnd\autoBeamOff This is quite cumbersome, so much so that I normally write it like this instead: <A>[[ ... <B>]] and run a perl script to pre-process it with these regexps: s/([^ ]+)\[\[/\\autoBeamOn $1\\melisma/g; s/\]\]([^ ]*)/$1\\melismaEnd \\autoBeamOff/g; I would like to request that this be added to the basic syntax rules. The \autoBeamOn command comes before the first note of the melisma, but in my notation it trails it to be more consistent with the "[" manual beaming notation, and with other grouping rules likes slurs. I realize that syntax changes must be approach with caution to avoid clutter, but this is a pretty fundamental part of vocal score preparation, and it is a pretty standard rule for typesetting vocal music. It does not conflict with existing syntax rules (to my knowledge anyway). It would also be (less) useful for instrumental parts as a way to control auto beaming, in which case turning melisma settings on and off would be harmless. A double bracket is simple and suggests beaming control, just as the single bracket notation controls manual beaming. I've used this for a few hundred pages of vocal scores with lilypond, and think it would be useful for others. I'd also love to cut out the pre-processing step from my own scores. I haven't been active on the lilypond mailing lists for several years, so I'd like to also say throw out a "thank you!" for lilypond, and particularly for all of the improvements I've seen over the last few years. - Russ _______________________________________________ bug-lilypond mailing list bug-lilypond@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond
