On 2022-08-13 22:04, David Kastrup wrote: We had this discussion a longer time ago, with chords and notes conflicting in that : is used for tremolo notation, too.
Now I've had the idea that _inside_ of < > we don't need to notate durations and thus < c: > would be unambiguous. Of course the reality is that :8 is not part of the duration but a separate tremolo event that is interpreted by the Stem_engraver . Somewhat off-topic, but still related: An inconvenient and non-intuitive consequence of the fact that :8 is not part of the duration, is that it's not remembered from note to note. This means that \relative c' { c2:8 d2:8 | e2:8 f2:8 | } cannot be shortened into \relative c' { c2:8 d | e f | } I was recently hit by surprise by this when typesetting some music, and I have to admit that I didn't notice directly that the typeset output wasn't as I expected, so I had to go back and add "2:8" at a number of places. It occurs to me when I write this, that I could have saved some typing by using \relative c' { c2:8 d:8 | e:8 f:8 | } On 2022-08-14 09:43, Jean Abou Samra wrote: We could also introduce a music function. I don't think tremoli are used frequently enough that having the most concise syntax for them is very important. Well, they are not that common in general, but in the pieces where it's used it's often used a lot, so when typesetting such pieces a compact syntax like the current one is clearly more convenient than a music function, and as just mentioned, it would be even more convenient if it was remembered in the same way as durations are remembered. Back to the syntax question, I don't remember the details of the previous discussions, but why not use some currently unused character such as semicolon, either in the chord syntax or for tremoli (with the risk of confusion with Scheme comments)? /Mats