[r-t] Descriptions (was: A date to pencil ...)

[Alexander Holroyd]

On Wed, 9 Sep 2015, Graham John wrote:

> Ander wrote:
>
> And yet it would appear that you managed to do just that in the above
> paragraph above.  What is wrong with that description exactly as it stands?
>
> It is a description, not a codification. If you are arguing for no
> codification system, we would not have stage names, method types and
> classes, method extensions, place notation, method names, composition
> layouts that conductors can understand, or proving programs, as all of that
> was created by our predecessors codifying what was rung.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "codification", nor what 
distinction you are trying to make.  Place notation, stage names etc 
all sound like descriptive terms to me.

In any case, I never said that existing descriptive terms should be 
abolished.  My concern is over the desire to force people to use them 
where they are not appropriate.

All we are trying
> to do now is expand that codification system to be able to describe much
> more in a consistent framework. Asking people to define what they rang in
> terms of methods and calls to codify what was rung is hardly an imposition,
> is it?

Of course it is an imposition.  The question is whether the benefits of 
imposing it outweigh the costs.  For me the answer is currently a 
resounding no, partly because no-one has yet been able to articulate any 
benefit whatsoever.  (While the costs are readily apparent from the 
current status quo).

I am just arguing that ringing more than one method in one row is an
> unnecessary complication in the codification scheme, because we would
> otherwise require a way of defining the start and end of each method rung
> in two dimensions (both between rows and within rows).

Again, I find it odd that this "requiring a way of defining" is such an 
apparent stumbling block, given that you already did it perfectly well in 
a previous email.  Does anyone have difficulty understanding a phrase such 
as "Plain Bob Minor on the middle six", etc?  If not, there is no need to 
mess with it.

cheers, Ander