Aaron Hill <lilyp...@hillvisions.com> writes: > On 2021-11-15 3:30 am, David Kastrup wrote: >> Not everyone picking 6/8 unambigulously wants to see this >> interpreted as >> 2 notes of 4. duration. So forcing a particular duration expressing a >> length not inherently specified is putting words in the composer's >> mouth. > > I agree. 6/8 communicates precisely six eighth notes--nothing more, > nothing less. While 2/4. might be a common conventional feel, it is > not a hard-and-fast rule. > > And correct me if I am wrong, but the problem you stated about 20 not > being a duration (as Lilypond defines it) is that it is not a > *singular* duration. For instance, all of these durations have the > same length (moment) of 1/20: > > 1*1/20 > 4.*2/15 > 16*4/5 > > Writing "\time 8/20" leaves one wondering how that /20 should be > rendered if not as a simple number. > > Writing "\time \musicFraction 8 \tuplet 5/4 { 16 }" lets the composer > be explicit about the intention.
There are basically three components we are talking about here. There is the strictly functional component of the length of a measure, there are more subtle functional components reflected in beat structure and related to that beaming patterns (and possibly some MIDI renderings), and there is the visual representation in the score. Forcing an artificial intermingling of those components in the internals when it is not necessarily intended by the composer seems like asking for trouble. Programmatically it seems to make more sense to do something like \withMusicFraction 8 \tuplet 5/4 { 16 } \time 8/20 where \withMusicFraction essentially overrides the stencil of the \time command (of course \time works in a much more cumbersome manner where making this a surefire thing would take some more work). But then there is little motivation left to not just make a separately named command instead. -- David Kastrup