Re: "Compound" meter

> On 6 Jan 2026, at 00:55, Dan Eble <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Would anyone here who teaches music in the English language encourage me to rename the NR node "Compound time signatures"?  (Find it under https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.25/Documentation/notation/displaying-rhythms#polymetric-notation .)
> 
> What I remember being taught is that "compound" refers to meters with triplet subdivision, such as 6/8, 9/8, 12/8.  Calling the time signatures in that NR section "complex" would make more sense to me, but I'm willing to be directed.

In Bulgarian music, they are called “mixed” (смесено), and from what I can see from net searches, the term is in use in English, too.

> The \compoundMeter command is in the same situation, but since \time was recently made capable of doing everything that \compoundMeter can do, converting \compoundMeter into a mere syntactic simplification of \time, I propose renaming \compoundMeter to \timeAbbr.
> 
> To clarify for those who haven't been following 2.25 development, these now construct the same music expression:
> 
>    \compoundMeter #'((2 3 8) (3 4))
>    \time #'(((2 3) . 8) (3 . 4))

Perhaps it should be deprecated, meaning that it remains for now, but may be removed in the future. It seems simpler to just use \time.