Over-cautionary accidentals plug-in

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motet
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Post by motet » Wed Apr 10, 2019 5:07 pm

over-a.png
Above is a measure of music, and below that the result of running the Cautionary Accidentals plug-in on it with these settings:
over-b.png
Note that there's nothing "cautionary" about the accidentals on beat 3; they're there to cancel the sharps on the preceding beats and shouldn't be parenthesized.

Here are before and after settings on the F-natural on beat 3 as shown in the edit frame.
over-c.png
The three "Accidental" flags seem wrong.

I use this plug-in, and have never noticed this before because I don't normally partenthesize cautionaries. But even without "Parenthesize" the plug-in will result in the "Accidental" and "Freeze Accidentals" flags set, which doesn't seem good. I wonder what the ramifications of this is should the measure later be edited.

With the options I selected, the plug-in shouldn't be doing anything at all with a single measure--a courtesy accidental should only be created by something that happened one or two measures previous. Long ago I remember someone on the old forums discovering some other bad result of the plug-in. Maybe it's time to write a JW Lua script to do this instead. I only want "Courtesy naturals".

And a minor nit-pick: why does it use "cautionary" in the plug-in name, but "courtesy" in the options?


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N Grossingink
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Post by N Grossingink » Wed Apr 10, 2019 7:03 pm

Have you ever tried the JW Accidentals plugin? It works without errors and is configurable for a number of different scenarios.

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miker
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Post by miker » Wed Apr 10, 2019 7:06 pm

And a minor nit-pick: why does it use "cautionary" in the plug-in name, but "courtesy" in the options?
Because if they had just used either one, half the people on the forum would complain that it should have been the other. :D
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motet
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Post by motet » Wed Apr 10, 2019 9:16 pm

I've tried JW Accidentals and didn't like it much, but I didn't play around with the settings extensively, so can't really render a verdict. What the MM plug-in does is straight-forward and doesn't need to be OK'd like JW Accidentals does--I always want those cautionaries. And JW Accidentals seemed confused by transposing staff styles and independent key signatures, which the MM plug-in is not. So maybe I will take a crack at a JW Lua script.

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motet
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Post by motet » Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:47 am

miker wrote:Because if they had just used either one, half the people on the forum would complain that it should have been the other. :D
"Courtesy naturals" is odd also because if the key signature contained sharps, for example, the "Courtesy naturals" would be sharps.

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motet
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Post by motet » Sat Apr 13, 2019 5:42 pm

Anyone using JW Accidentals? If I run it on this:
1.png
I get this:
2.png
and if I let it proceed:
3.png
This piece is squarely in C major, and this in fact is the first measure of the piece. It seems be confused by octaves. Same result whether or not "independent octaves" is checked in the profile.

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motet
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Post by motet » Sat Apr 13, 2019 6:58 pm

In fact, it doesn't seem to like the same note in different octaves. I've circled here the notes it flagged:
4.png
In this case, checking "independent octaves on same instrument" eliminates them (unlike with the celesta above).

In the case of the B-flat, the last note in the second measure is a cautionary I added by hand (because of the augmented 4th), though that shouldn't trigger the cautionary in the next measure, since B-flat is in the key signature. But in the case of the G's, I can't guess at any reason--no G's are given accidentals anywhere.

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motet
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Post by motet » Sat Apr 13, 2019 7:06 pm

Final beef for now. It seems to want to put cautionaries at a key change. I guess I can understand how someone might want this, but my own opinion is it's unnecessary since the key signature is right there staring you in the face, so it seems like you should be able to turn this off, but there doesn't seem to be a way.
5.png
It's true that with JW Accidentals, it gives you a chance to opt out before it goes and does it, but I seem to get a lot of these false positives, often dozens, so it becomes a chore. I really just want cautionaries which cancel accidentals one or two measures previous--that's it. The MM plug-in does it, but there is erroneous setting of flags reported at the beginning of this thread.

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zuill
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Post by zuill » Sun Apr 14, 2019 3:13 am

I know it's tedious, but I've always done my cautionary (courtesy) accidentals manually. I guess I'm too cautious.

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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Apr 15, 2019 5:21 am

That is the best, of course, but not always practical for me, and I'm afraid of missing something.

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