No R in input! (Proposal for discussion)

[Simon Albrecht]

Hello everybody,

once again I find myself typesetting ancient music, which poses special 
challenges with regard to separation of content and presentation. Right 
now, I’m talking about the fact that bar lines are an editor’s decision 
and not part of the musical content – different editors might place bar 
lines after a breve, a semibreve, none at all, or only inbetween staves.

This means amongst others that in order to use the same music source for 
different editions, it should not be hardcoded which rests are MMRs and 
which aren’t. Also, I don’t think there’s any ambiguity in the following 
translation: Every rest which fills one or more entire bars should be 
treated as a MMR by the typesetting engine.

Thus, I would like to deliver a plea to perspectively abolish the 
distinction between r and R in LilyPond source code and have the 
engravers handle the difference.

This would also get us rid of one possibility to make mistakes in engraving.

I had this idea right now and it feels too convincing to me to actually 
be as good as it seems. Hence I’d love to hear your opinions. What 
complications are there (aside from the effort of implementation) that I 
fail to see?

Best, Simon