Re: Suggestion: Use non powers of 2 for tuplets

[David Kastrup]

Valentin Petzel <valentin@petzel.at> writes:

> Hello!
>
> Currently Lilypond only supports powers of 2 for specifying
> duration. Could we use the other numbers for common divisions?
>
> For example: We could use 3 for 2*3/2, 5 for 4*5/4, 6 for 4*3/2, 7 for
> 8*7/8, 9 for 8*9/8, 10 for 8*5/4, 11 for 8*11/8, 12 for 8*3/2 and so
> on.

LilyPond is a notation program first, and your proposal does not map to
notation since tuplets also involve choices of beaming and division.

> This would be quite useful, especially for the divisions of three (*3/2), 
> because stuff like this
> e8*2/3 dis cis cis8. dis16 e8*2/3 dis cis cis8. dis16
> Is not really nice to enter,

It also is distracting to read (even if Baroque autographs tend to omit
tuplet numbers like that).  Use \tuplet instead.

> while e12 dis cis cis8. dis16 e12 dis cis cis8. dis16 would be much
> less effort.

It does not indicate what note values to use visually.  If we only
wanted to produce Midi, we'd not need to distinguish cis and des either.

-- 
David Kastrup