Hi Alexander, On your point about technical restrictions: I would just say that by the time a musician becomes a professional he/she has read thousands of scores with rounded notes, non-pointy angles, heavy dynamics font, etc. I think "beauty" in this sense is of the practical variety, not the poetic or ethereal type. I mean if you wrote an orchestral score in which each dynamic looked unique and had a little marginalia creature embedded in it, it would definitely be a beautiful score that would be fun to examine. But it would be a pain to conduct from-- i.e., not so beautiful in that sense. When a musician has told me, "your score looks great/excellent/beautiful" I think what they mean is, "thank you for considering my (likely failing) vision and making the music as clear and easy to read as possible so I can spend more time playing music, which I obviously love, and less time doing what amounts to bookkeeping-- clearing up ambiguities/misprints, adjusting my eyes to a weird font, trying not to be distracted by stems that are too heave/light, squinting at hair-thin lines, etc."
-Jonathan --- On Wed, 4/21/10, Alexander Deubelbeiss <deube...@gmx.net> wrote: From: Alexander Deubelbeiss <deube...@gmx.net> Subject: New Essay:nitpicking To: bug-lilypond@gnu.org Date: Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 10:44 PM I became aware of the Essay rewrite through the bug list and had a quick read-through of the new text. I agree it's an improvement over the old one, but would like to point out three minor matters. Typo: In the penultimate paragraph of _1.3 Automated engraving - Getting things right_, please replace "acceptible" with "acceptable" (twice) Typo: In _1.4 Building software - Music representation_, replace "heirarchical" with "hierarchical" (just before the music example preceding the Tidy Structure of Nested Boxes illustration) Finally, for a less clear-cut problem: I can't follow the argument about sharp points in _1.2 Engraving details - Music fonts_ (the paragraph after the illustration comparing Opus with Feta/Emmentaler). In the middle of a discussion of legibility and beauty in music fonts, a design choice (non-pointy angles) is justified through a technical restriction (fragile dies) that doesn't apply in a computer-based printing context. I'll happily agree that the Lilypond variety "just looks nicer", but if nobody can come up with a concise explanation to put in the essay, I'd suggest not mentioning the matter at all. The current text produces a somewhat fanboyish impression, justifying a design detail with "because The Masters did it that way" even while admitting that said Masters' reasons for choosing their solution no longer apply. ... <shrug> or leave it, I guess. I think the old essay had roughly the same text there, and it doesn't seem to have provoked any complaints. -- GRATIS für alle GMX-Mitglieder: Die maxdome Movie-FLAT! Jetzt freischalten unter http://portal.gmx.net/de/go/maxdome01 _______________________________________________ bug-lilypond mailing list bug-lilypond@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond _______________________________________________ bug-lilypond mailing list bug-lilypond@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond
