Now I’ve read up the whole thread, I might add some clarification on my thoughts.

On 01.11.2016 11:42, Simon Albrecht wrote:
The current mechanism at least provides consistency between the \voiceOne, \voiceTwo… command names and the order in << \\ \\ >>. And I don’t see how strict top-down numbering would be less confusing in general. Indeed, I think that the current rules make a lot of sense, once one has gotten the idea.

Perhaps some ASCII art is a nice way of advertising the current logic:

X
  \       X
   \     / \   X
    \   /   \ / X
     \ /     X
      X

To my mind this makes a lot of sense. Another way to frame this virtue of the current way:

<< …voiceOne… \\ …voiceTwo >>
<< …voiceOne… \\ …voiceTwo… \\ …voiceThree… >>
<< …voiceOne… \\ …voiceTwo… \\ …voiceThree… \\ …voiceFour… >>

Adding more voices doesn’t turn everything else up. The progression from a two voice layout to a six voice layout is pretty logical, whereas with the new proposal of top-bottom-numbering something like this would be going back and forth in a way that is at least no better than the current snaky alternating between top and bottom.

One would almost never use something like
<< \sopranoI \\ \altoII \\ \sopranoII \\ \altoI >>
anyway – there would be lyrics involved and it very quickly becomes necessary to use two staves. For piano music however the alternating layout now used is quite sensible. Also, users already have the freedom to do things like

<<
  \new Voice { \voiceOne \sopranoI }
  \new Voice { \voiceThree \sopranoII }
  \new Voice { \voiceFour \altoI }
  \new Voice { \voiceTwo \altoII }
>>

There is great versatility available, and many possibilities to adapt to different situations.

And as you said: this is a hugely disruptive change. How could backward compatibility be achieved? Maybe using something like

#(use-oldstyle-voice-numbering)

on top level at the beginning of the file.
IMO it’s definitely not worth the enormous hassle.

Best, Simon

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