Re: [Lilypond-auto] Issue 4076 in lilypond: allow bn for B-natural in English

[lilypond]

Comment #38 on issue 4076 by address@hidden: allow bn for B-natural in English
https://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=4076

Ok, let's get this back on a roll.  Several people actively using the  
English notename language have expressed the desire to have the aliases bn  
and stuff.  The main opposition, I believe, has come from "wardens" not  
actively engaged in the usage of the English input language like myself.   
Keith apparently switched to the English notename language solely for the  
purpose of experimenting with bn and its ilk, and it's more or less what  
made it comfortable enough for him to stick with it.

Now Keith is at least from an English language background.  And the main  
point of the notename languages in the first place is making people with a  
given background comfortable with LilyPond (of course there are some other  
reasons of somewhat secondary nature, like it being much more satisfactory  
to use the German notename language for pinning down a fugue on the theme B  
A C H).

LilyPond allows a number of ways to individualize input methods and make  
them express some core idea (most predefined music functions do just that).

I am not enthused about the way this change achieves that because  
that "core idea" here has no reflection in the way LilyPond forms its  
expressions and so will not survive a translation into almost any music  
representation.  Nor would it be acceptable (as far as I understand) to let  
music expressions translated into textual representation by always using  
the xn moniker.  This change is not intended to _generally_ replace x by  
xn, but merely for allowing xn as an alias for x in situations that feel  
important to a human but that are irrelevant to LilyPond.

If the normal output is not changed (as opposed to what issue 4209 would do  
without having issue 4210 in place), and all previously valid input remains  
valid, there is not much of a point in having a different notename  
language, and there is no really significant drawback for users.

The drawback is allowing for a new input style that might confuse people  
when they see it in other people's input files.

But frankly, I've been writing a lot more LilyPond code files than LilyPond  
input files, and when I have been writing the latter (or reading other  
people's "serious" code"), LilyPond is not yet in the stage where nice  
output is produced by code that has only non-confusing input.

At any rate, I'd recommend to go ahead basically with the first version of  
this patch (that without extra notename language), but add the "anatural"  
etc long notenames.  I don't think we should have "asharp"  
without "anatural".  It would be probably too much of a revolution  
(or "unrelated issue") to cut off "asharp" and its cousins altogether.

There might be some interference with issue 4209 and issue 4210 requiring  
rebasing/extending of either this issue or those.  Feel free to mark any  
other issues as blocked which you feel should come after the conclusion of  
this one.

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