Re: [Lilypond-auto] Issue 4191 in lilypond: Patch: Add an "\or" markup command

[lilypond]

Comment #14 on issue 4191 by address@hidden: Patch: Add an "\or" markup command
https://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=4191

Thanks.  I am not entirely happy with the name of the function (even though  
it will not cause the sequence "(or " to occur in code and we have other  
markup commands definitely requiring the markup and normal namespaces to be  
separate) but don't have any better proposal.  Other options like  
like "find", "first", "any" don't seem like an improvement regarding the  
almost-but-not-quite semantic match with a preexisting function, and a  
compound like "\first-non-empty" would be more descriptive but a bit  
cumbersome.

The main complaint about "\or" is likely that its meaning will only be  
(almost) obvious to Scheme programmers, and we usually try accommodating  
users without affinity to Scheme.  I cannot in good conscience claim that  
our markup commands tend to be LaTeX-like (since LaTeX does not permit  
dashes in command names, and our markup commands use them lavishly) but the  
namings tend to be more typesetting-oriented than Scheme-oriented as a rule.

Should we establish a buzzphrase for the negative "non-empty" as related to  
stencils?  It might come in handy elsewhere.  Something like  
\first-printing or \any-printable or \find-actual or so seems a bit better  
than the negative.

One advantage of starting this feature with a more cumbersome name is that  
going from there to something short and generic is still possible via  
convert-ly rules, but the reverse is likely to have false positives for  
automatic conversion.

Though the particular pattern \b\\or\b is only typical for TeX code (where  
it means something quite different).  And if that were a concern, things  
like \raise and \lower would already be a nuisance.

So in summary: I don't really have a convincing _technical_ argument  
against the naming of \or (and there is no doubt that its functionality is  
useful).

Its just that its naming feels odd to me in the context of markups.  Make  
of that what you will.

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