update: Dictionary "Equal Temperament" page

hello all,

paul erlich made a very nice update of the "vanishing commas"
table on the Tuning Dictionary "Equal Temperament" page:

http://sonic-arts.org/dict/eqtemp.htm

thanks, paul !!!

-monz

does anyone have any idea why the cell borders look so weird in this
table? i created it separately from the page, and it looked great,
but when inserted into the page, it looks all funny, with strange
white lines and uneven cell divisions. i especially wanted the first
five columns to look separate from the last five, which they did in
the original, but not when inserted into the table. hmtl experts,
help!

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <monz@a...> wrote:
> hello all,
>
>
> paul erlich made a very nice update of the "vanishing commas"
> table on the Tuning Dictionary "Equal Temperament" page:
>
> http://sonic-arts.org/dict/eqtemp.htm
>
>
> thanks, paul !!!
>
>
>
> -monz

On Sunday 19 October 2003 10:40 pm, Paul Erlich wrote:
> does anyone have any idea why the cell borders look so weird in this
> table? i created it separately from the page, and it looked great,
> but when inserted into the page, it looks all funny, with strange
> white lines and uneven cell divisions. i especially wanted the first
> five columns to look separate from the last five, which they did in
> the original, but not when inserted into the table. hmtl experts,
> help!
>

Paul, did you try manually adding aspect ratio data to the img tags?

-Aaron.

>does anyone have any idea why the cell borders look so weird in this
>table? i created it separately from the page, and it looked great,
>but when inserted into the page, it looks all funny, with strange
>white lines and uneven cell divisions. i especially wanted the first
>five columns to look separate from the last five, which they did in
>the original, but not when inserted into the table. hmtl experts,
>help!

Which table? The big table at http://sonic-arts.org/dict/eqtemp.htm
looks fine to me. Though Aaron mentions something about img tags,
so I must be looking at the wrong one.

-Carl

on 10/19/03 8:40 PM, Paul Erlich <paul@stretch-music.com> wrote:

> does anyone have any idea why the cell borders look so weird in this
> table? i created it separately from the page, and it looked great,
> but when inserted into the page, it looks all funny, with strange
> white lines and uneven cell divisions. i especially wanted the first
> five columns to look separate from the last five, which they did in
> the original, but not when inserted into the table. hmtl experts,
> help!

The table looks pretty good to me in Mozilla/Mac, and I can see the two
groups of colums, but perhaps only since you mentioned it. It looks less
good (and not fitting on my screen - requiring horizontal scrolling) in
IE5.0/Mac. But even in IE I can see the wider column gap in the middle.

I'd suggest widening the mid-table gap a tad more, or perhaps, use a narrow
dummy column (with no text) with a different cell color to make it even
clearer. I think you have to put in a little text, like a non-breaking
space, to force the cell color to show when you have no *real* text in the
cell, i.e. <td> </td>, otherwise the results will not work well in all
browsers. Then set the desired width for that column in pixels to get the
desired result.

It might also be give a better result to use another level of nested table
structure for more clarity. There are off-hand 2 ways to do this. To keep
the information manageable for editing by hand you probably want to keep
your row organization *roughly* the same but have 2 cells per row instead of
10, with each cell further subdivided via a nested table into 5 cells,
dividing each row in 2. Alternatively if you are generting the table using
a cgi (perl script or whatever), you might consider generating the first 5
and last 5 columns as 2 separate tables wrapped in a single container table.
The second approach simplifies the structure but dissociates related
information unless you are doing it via a cgi. Either way you do that you
need to make sure the column widths or row heights match to keep things
aligned.

I know that isn't brilliantly clear, so maybe ask me more off-list if
necessary.

-Kurt

>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <monz@a...> wrote:
>> hello all,
>>
>>
>> paul erlich made a very nice update of the "vanishing commas"
>> table on the Tuning Dictionary "Equal Temperament" page:
>>
>> http://sonic-arts.org/dict/eqtemp.htm

> I'd suggest widening the mid-table gap a tad more, or perhaps, use a narrow
> dummy column (with no text) with a different cell color to make it even
> clearer. I think you have to put in a little text, like a non-breaking
> space, to force the cell color to show when you have no *real* text in the
> cell, i.e. <td> </td>, otherwise the results will not work well in all
> browsers. Then set the desired width for that column in pixels to get the
> desired result.

Yuck! No widths in pixels please -- you shouldn't depend on the display resolution. I find percentages safest, if you really do want to specify this. That is, change <td> to <td width="10%"> or whatever for the cells on the top row. And yes, you need the  .

I notice the whole table is wrapped in <font>, <pre> and <b> tags. I don't know what the standards say about these, but the <pre> at least seem to be doing something, and could be why you don't like it? Also, there's a "CELPADDING" specification which presumably should be "CELLPADDING". I think <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0x000000"> should give you thin, black lines -- try it out.

Anyway, it looks fine to me in Mozilla. Why this desire to name every single temperament?

Graham

>Why this desire to name every single temperament?

It made it easy for me to add them to the scale archive.

Manuel

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron K. Johnson" <akjmicro@c...>
wrote:
> On Sunday 19 October 2003 10:40 pm, Paul Erlich wrote:
> > does anyone have any idea why the cell borders look so weird in
this
> > table? i created it separately from the page, and it looked great,
> > but when inserted into the page, it looks all funny, with strange
> > white lines and uneven cell divisions. i especially wanted the
first
> > five columns to look separate from the last five, which they did
in
> > the original, but not when inserted into the table. hmtl experts,
> > help!
> >
>
> Paul, did you try manually adding aspect ratio data to the img tags?
>
> -Aaron.

i don't know what img tags are. i used the <table> command, and tried
various values of 'cellpadding', but that didn't help. maybe any
further advice should be directed offlist or to the metatuning list.
thanks.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Manuel Op de Coul"
<manuel.op.de.coul@e...> wrote:
>
> >Why this desire to name every single temperament?
>
> It made it easy for me to add them to the scale archive.

Have you been adding any temperaments with prime limit above 5? What
do you mean by this--in the form of a particular scl file, or
something more general?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <graham@m...> wrote:

> Why this desire to name every
> single temperament?
>
>
> Graham

these shouldn't be new to you, but there's no serious desire at work -
- just playfulness, and most of all the convenience of being able to
identify the lines on the et chart with the data in the table below.

(we're talking about http://www.sonic-arts.org/dict/eqtemp.htm . . .)

it could have been done with the vector notation of the vanishing
commas, but sometimes too many numbers on a chart just make the eyes
glaze over . . .

on 10/20/03 1:48 AM, Graham Breed <graham@microtonal.co.uk> wrote:

>> I'd suggest widening the mid-table gap a tad more, or perhaps, use a narrow
>> dummy column (with no text) with a different cell color to make it even
>> clearer. I think you have to put in a little text, like a non-breaking
>> space, to force the cell color to show when you have no *real* text in the
>> cell, i.e. <td> </td>, otherwise the results will not work well in all
>> browsers. Then set the desired width for that column in pixels to get the
>> desired result.
>
> Yuck! No widths in pixels please -- you shouldn't depend on the display
> resolution.

Width in pixels is best for tiny amounts (say up to 7), and percentages for
large amounts. The whole point here is to create a "thick line", or even a
"very thick line". You don't want to do that in percentages. At least I
wouldn't.

Gene wrote:
>Have you been adding any temperaments with prime limit above 5?

Yes, some.

>What do you mean by this--in the form of a particular scl file, or
>something more general?

In the form of a scale file. With a number of tones that gives a
well-formed (Myhill) scale and the generator mentioned, so one
can easily make a different sized scale.

Manuel