Xenharmonic Wiki talk:Things to do

Automatic color names?

Has somebody mused about generating suitable humane color names for intervals and other things? For example, for an interval, one needs to know whether to name it a third, a fourth, a sixth, but AFAIU they are often scale-dependent, and the same interval can have a “(color 1) third” name and a “(color 2) fourth” name. What can be done obviously is to enumerate the most sensible of potential cases (like if the interval is between 5/4 and 4/3, likely it will function more often as a third or fourth and less often as a second or fifth), but one needs to be able to tell for example if 7/5 may called a fourth, or there’s a sense it should be called a fifth way more often than a fourth. I’d try to write some code to guess appropriate color names, but having advice beforehand would be very nice. --Arseniiv (talk) 18:08, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Oops, I hadn’t read the description well enough! The matter is way simpler and there is no guessing at all. --Arseniiv (talk) 20:10, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Add to the navbar

It would be also worth it to add this page to the navigation close to Help and Conventions, even if later. --Arseniiv (talk) 21:09, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

We'll do that soon. But I think that we should first have to clarify its structure. I'd prefer dedicated pages one per task (maybe as sub pages). We should have a handful of clearly defined projects available before we link this overview in the navigation. The style of the existing ones will silently work as a blueprint for future projects, so we better limit confusion to a minimum. a bit of styling (for the intro in the header) could also help to make this site as inviting as possible. --Xenwolf (talk) 21:40, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree. Also I agree subpages are a clean way. Some of them may be transcluded, other just linked to?.. Intro styling is good but here I think I used all my style mana on the todo template today, so better someone else. :D --Arseniiv (talk) 21:53, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I think we've come a long way and can afford a break, and it's also good to keep gaining distance so as not to get stuck. --Xenwolf (talk) 21:59, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

🤝

BTW would be nice to make something to enter a couple of frequent emoji from somewhere near post edit. Does MediaWiki has a toolbar or something for this case?.. --Arseniiv (talk) 22:05, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Template:Stub

I hope that would be found useful to automatically categorize pages as needing attention (maybe even different kinds of attention?), as well as marking the places needing elaboration. For example, right on this page until it’s “production ready” ;-) I’ll investigate later if I’m up to the task to desigh a nice-looking template but if you know how to do it easily, please feel free to! --Arseniiv (talk) 17:43, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Before thinking about an appropriate Template:Stub, I think Category:Todo is worth a look, as well as its sub categories, these category developed out of wikispaces tags and are maybe more specific then just stub. --Xenwolf (talk) 18:24, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh, this is a treasure! But a visual rectangular reminder may still be useful? Let it be tunable to include the subcategory of Todo one wants to apply. How do you think? I’ll experiment with that in a subspace. --Arseniiv (talk) 18:53, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

The template with an example of how it looks: User:Arseniiv/TodoTest. It seems to apply the category correctly. Maybe that can find some use still, but if not, no problem. --Arseniiv (talk) 19:51, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I moved this discussion from Xenharmonic Wiki:Things to do to here, since it's not decided yet whether it should go into the list. --Xenwolf (talk) 12:42, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Now that two days have passed and no new things to add or remove arose, maybe we should now migrate the Todo template to the template namespace and start sticking it everywhere :) Also it’s very nice Template:Infobox interval automatically adds todo categories, I think this is a way to go with other specialized templates, should they apper later. --Arseniiv (talk) 14:28, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Infobox for EDO pages

Let’s list what should be present in the template:

• step count (steps)

• period? (for EDT and several others?)

  [Xenwolf: no need, consider other templates for other EDs]

• step size

  [Xenwolf: size alone isn't clear]

• commas tempered out

  [FloraC: too many stuff]

• notable commas not tempered out? (possibly with an example of distinguished JI intervals?)

  [FloraC: too many stuff]

• family?

• JI subgroup represented fairly well? (and a patent val?)

• notable modes?

  [FloraC: no consensus]

  [Arseniiv: now I come to think including entire modes would also bloat the table]

• related EDOs? (maybe more specific relations, like “refines 11edo”?)

  [Xenwolf: include predecessor and successor EDOs]

Thoughts? --Arseniiv (talk) 14:44, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

The parameters step count (or step size) and size seem indisputable to me, EDO implies 2/1 as period (I'd consider to make other templates for other EDs). What about prime factorization? Relates would be great for navigational purposes (for instance predecessor and successor). As far as the parameters can be filled without headaches and without edit wars they should be included. Maybe we can get a community process started about that. --Xenwolf (talk) 18:31, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Do you mean prime factorization for steps? --Arseniiv (talk) 19:39, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Writing only size was a mistake: I corrected that in may comment and in the "working copy" on top. --Xenwolf (talk) 20:42, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid Commas tempered out and Commas not tempered out are too many stuff. And there's no consensus what constitutes "notable". FloraC (talk) 18:47, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

(To all:) Is there a consensus about patent vals for EDOs? I seem to remember in several cases there were at least two vals which would be as good, so I don’t know if it’s a good for the template. Also the same about well-representedness of JI subgroups.

I added your comments to the list above so they won’t be forgotten if someone would take just the list and make something! --Arseniiv (talk) 19:39, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Relations of various interval categories

There are Category:Interval, Category:Just interval, Category:Interval ratio and Category:Ratio with different content of m/n pages like 3/2. Maybe someone knows if there was an intention behind that?

Also there seems to be a forgotten todo in the description of Category:Intervals. --Arseniiv (talk) 16:06, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Good catch! This is caused by the migration procedure (from wikispaces to MediaWiki), categories were retrieved from tags. Tags are much more lightweight and community-driven so there is not much consistency. The important question is how to name it, which has to be wisely decided considering relating (super, sub, sibling) categories. --Xenwolf (talk) 18:21, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah I agree. AFAIU, no one here needs ratios by themselves, mathematically, so we would have a simple inclusion Just interval inside Interval, taking both existing categories and reshuffling which page belongs where: rational intervals into Just interval, and remaining few irrational intervals may reside directly in Interval without their own subcategory. (FTR Category:Comma stays as it was.) Now we need more opinions! --Arseniiv (talk) 18:59, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree. I think Category:Just interval is the best solution here (a more technical term would be something like Category:Interval page, but I prefer your - more pragmatic - solution). --Xenwolf (talk) 17:41, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Templates for wedgies, n-vals?..

How much are they used on the pages? If very so, then if n-vals other than bivals are pretty common too, there can be a reason to make a unified template to rule them all and write as many ⟨ and ] as the user decides, defaulting to two. --Arseniiv (talk) 16:32, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Website for listening to intervals

Does someone understand browsers’ API for sound playback? Reading Talk:62/53‎‎ gave me an idea. Imagine a website which has a small arsenal of samples of various timbres (maybe sampled in several registers but no need to sample extensively) which it can play to you at intervals you choose. You may compare both how the same interval sounds with different timbres and how do different intervals sound. Maybe also chords, and all of it arpeggiated and instantaneous in any combination you wish. (I have a rough idea how it can all be packed into a comfy UI.) And then we could make links from interval pages to hear or compare them at that site. Surely looks great? If you have more ideas of this sort, please share!

(For me the main block here is that I can’t make heads from tails of browser JavaScript infrastructure and APIs (well, I have some rudimentary outdated knowledge). The server part should be very simple: just fetch pages and sample files. all work will be in the browser. Though I have friends that are in better terms with JS, maybe I’ll could make something with their help later.) --Arseniiv (talk) 13:22, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

A browser-based solution (JS, WebAudio) would be really great. This included in Interval pages would be superior to most sound examples we uploaded. --Xenwolf (talk) 13:36, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Very glad you like it! I also added my view on GUI at User:Arseniiv/Interval player idea. Now I can leave it for a while. --Arseniiv (talk) 13:55, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I didn't saw something like that. Maybe other xenharmonics have a better memory for that. Here is an interesting resource (provided you are not on IE 😉): JavaScript Systems Music --Xenwolf (talk) 14:35, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, that would be useful! --Arseniiv (talk) 14:41, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Here is what led me to above page: Making Generative Music in the Browser | by Alex Bainter | Medium --Xenwolf (talk) 15:08, 8 November 2020 (UTC)