[r-t] 8 spliced atw 7com

[Mark Davies]

Ander writes,

> Up to this point, Mark, your point of view had a sort of twisted logic,

I'll take that as a compliment...

> but here you seem to be descending into the land of madness.  According to
> what you are saying, a change of method is not a "change of method" unless
> is occurs at a lead end, or some other "conventional" point.  So if I ring
> 9 changes of Cambridge and then change to Bristol, starting at the half
> lead, that is not a "change of method"?   Uh?

Err, no; I don't think I ever said that, nor imply that.

So the email you quote was about "conventional" spliced, where the 
smallest unit is always a lead. Here the only way to analyse 
snap-finishes is to consider that they are not round blocks.

However, Alan then pursued the idea of considering snap-finishes as 
round blocks, which it is indeed possible to do, as I alluded to. My 
later email gave two ways of looking at a snap-finish as a round block, 
including the approach where one may start a new method midway through a 
lead. Here the only question is whether, if I ring two changes of the 
Yorkshire lead, then restart at the beginning of a lead of Yorkshire, I 
have rung a "change of method". I answered that with a "no".

But clearly if I ring a bit of a lead of one method, then jump into a 
lead (or a bit of a lead) of another, why that is certainly a change of 
method. That's obvious. What led you to think I wouldn't agree with that?

Consider these two touches, from my previous example:

   YYYY-L LYs(Y)
   LY-L LYs(Y)

If we view these as conventional snap-finish touches, where the lead is 
an indivisible unit, then neither are round blocks. We cannot rotate 
them. The first has 2 com, the second, 3.

If we view them as round blocks, where we allow partial leads and 
"restarts" of leads, then the first still has 2 com, but the second now 
has 4. This is because we are allowed to ring:

  LYs(Y) LY-L

In practice no-one is likely to do this, of course. However, it is 
entirely possible to come up with more useful compositions which do use 
partial leads throughout: it would naturally be better to consider these 
as round blocks regardless of where they finished, and hence my 
"round-block" counting method is more appropriate.

Is there a conflict here? No, I don't think so. A conventional touch of 
spliced with a snap finish is going to be described as such, and we can 
be sure it is not a round block, and count COM appropriately. A touch 
with true partial leads is going to be described quite differently - the 
figures must include details of how the partial leads are to be entered 
and left, for instance. We can be sure that such a touch is a round block.

MBD