Ambiguity in some abbreviations in English
Soprano, Alto, and Baritone Bugle appear abbreviated in English as Sop, Alt, and Bari, without any clue as to the fact that they refer to bugles and not to the vocal parts. I think it should be fixed.
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Comments
How? The vocals are abbreviated S., A., T., Bar., B., no conflicts as far as I can see.
In reply to How? by Jojo-Schmitz
Yes, but there are other cases where there are also soprano, alto, etc. versions of an instrument and some clue is provided in the abbreviation as to which instrument family they refer to.
In reply to Yes, but there are other… by fmiyara
It'd be pretty hard to make sure all abbreviations are unique. But which would you suggest?
In reply to It'd be pretty hard to make… by Jojo-Schmitz
S. Bu., A. Bu. and Bar. Bu.
Maybe it is not unique, but it would be consistent with the abbreviation of Bugle, Bu., and easily understood in context.
In reply to S. Bu., A. Bu. and B. Bu… by fmiyara
OK. Too late for 2.x, but could get changed for 3.0.
for 2.x we can only change the translation on transifex, including those for en_US.
And I have done that right now (for en_US, en_UK and de).
And also changed "Contra" for "Contrabass Bugle" to "Cb. Bu."
And at https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/3794 is the PR to get this changed for 3.0
Edit: PR got merged, so it will be corrected in 3.0. Until then, for 2.3(.1), it needs to get fixed in the translations on Transifex
We should not be making decisions like this ourselves - we should be consulting standard references, published scores, etc.
In reply to We should not be making… by Marc Sabatella
Where are reliable sources for this? As long as none are shown, I'd rather use common sense ;-)
In reply to Where are reliable sources… by Jojo-Schmitz
I don't have my copy of "Behind Bars" handy, but that's often a good starting point. Not sure if she covers these instruments, though. So I'd instead do some Google searches to find published scores. Experience has shown that common snese has little to do with how standards develop for instrument naming :-)
In reply to We should not be making… by Marc Sabatella
Experience with published scores has taught me that there are so many instruments that you get an inconsistent abbreviation for instruments from one score to another, and at times within the same score and even in the same movement!
I suggest, that unless there is a standard found (like SATB) that we not get too wrapped up in the proper abbreviations and leave it to the user to change them to avoid ambiguities.
In reply to We should not be making… by Marc Sabatella
I completely agree that if there are authoritative references that address the problem we should stick to them. However, this problem arises in cases of instruments that are not so frequently used so it is very difficult to find (if it does exist at all) normative information.
I've searched on IMSLP and there are very few examples of bugle scores. The most representative of this kind of situation is this arrangement of a motet:
http://conquest.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/d/dd/IMSLP189811-PMLP174…
In this case the abbreviations have to do with parts, they are C, Q, A, T, B, and are related to the original parts. As there are no other instruments appart from the bugle family, there is no need to make it explicit in the abbreviation, but if the score featured, for instance, a tenor singer, then to avoid ambiguity the tenor bugle abbreviation would need to include some clue.
As Mike said, the abbreviation proposed by MuseScore to the engraver is just a starting point and can be changed. If we received several complaints making it evident that we failed at chosing the standard abbreviation, the next version could fix that. In the meantime, common sense aided by some knowledge of the philosophy behind abbreviations could do the job.