Re: What is the problem with "\relative"? (Was: Do we really offer the future?)

[Eyolf Østrem]

On 23.04.2015 (10:04), H. S. Teoh wrote:

> Besides, only powers of 2 are valid for durations, which wastes all the
> other numbers in between. Unfortunately I don't have a good idea on how
> to write durations without using digits either.

I started on a vim script to remap the keyboard as follows: 

" -------------------------------------------------------------------------  
" |  s  |  g  |  a  |  b  |times|     |     |  '  |16/64|32/128     |     |
" |  Q  |  W  |  E  |  R  |  T  |  Y  |  U  |  I  |  O  |  P  |     |     |
" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------  
"   |  c  |  d  |  e  |  f  | r/R |  1  |  2  |  4  |  8  |     |     |     |
"   |  A  |  S  |  D  |  F  |  G  |  H  |  J  |  K  |  L  |     |     |     |
"   ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
"     |undo | del |flat |sharp|breve| dot |  ,  |     |     |     |     |
"     |  Z  |  X  |  C  |  V  |  B  |  N  |  M  |     |     |     |     |
"     -------------------------------------------------------------------

" So, the keyboard is completely remapped: the left hand enters the pitches, in
" the sequence of a piano keyboard, and the right hand 'plays' the rhythms,
" which are laid out 'ergonomically' from the \breve (B) to the 32nd note (P):
" 64th and 128th notes re-use the O and P keys in shifted position, and
" \longa and \maxima are placed on <S-l> and <S-m>. 
" Flats and sharps are added with 'c' and 'v', octaves are modified with
" 'i' (up) and 'm' (down), and cautionary accidentals  are entered with '!'
" and '?'. A \fermata is added with '.'
"
" The script simplifies note entry for lilypond files. Three different
" kinds of tasks are performed with single or just-a-few key presses: 
" - entry of a new note; 
" - modification of an existing note (wrt duration, accidentals, octave,
"   dots, cautionary accidentals, and articulation signs); 
" - certain special signs, such as fermata, musica ficta, \times x/y {}, etc.
"
" The layout ensures that values that are likely to be close together
" (stepwise motion and leaps of fourths; 'f' + 'sharp', 'e' + 'flat';
" adjacent rhythm values, etc.) are close together also on the keyboard. 
"
" Any of the "pitch keys" (asdfwer, plus qgG for s, r, and R) enters a
" single note name. Accidental modifications are rememebered, so one
" doesn't have to change every 'f' to 'fis' in g major. Modifications of
" the simple note is done subsequently. E.g., to turn  
"
"                  f     into      fisis!,\breve..
" 
" one would type the keys 'vv!mbnn' in any order.

With this scheme, note entry is faster than in any other note-entry system
I've tried (and I've tried a lot), perhaps excepting midi input. Most
notably in this context is that there is no jumping up and down to the
number row, and, yes, no redundancy wrt which numbers are used. 

Unfortunatly, I never managed to finish it - vimscript is an odd beast -
but I've found that MuseScore can be configured to work more or less the
same way, so that's what I'm using now.

Eyolf


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