Hi Peter, many thanks for your suggestions.
Without any intent to offend you, let me (partly) play the devil's advocate... ;) Am Mo., 30. Dez. 2019 um 17:11 Uhr schrieb Peter Toye <lilyp...@ptoye.com>: > > As an occasional and fairly new Lilypond user I've found that the > documentation is occasionally obscure or misleading. I've made a few > suggestions below. > > I've used the 2.19.83 documentation as the baseline. > > Have a great 2020. > > Regards, > > Peter > mailto:lilyp...@ptoye.com > www.ptoye.com > > 1. There is no index entry in NR for the \language command. It is mentioned > only once: in Section 1.1.1 'Note names in other languages' - I suggest > adding an index entry for it. Well, there _is_ an entry in NR for "language" in D. LilyPond command index E. LilyPond index In the 2.21.0 Docs it's changed to "\language" > 2. Neither LM nor NR mention that the default language for entering pitches > is English. This might be confusing to non-English newbie engravers. I > suggest adding to LM Section 1.2.1 'Pitches' something like: > > 'By default, note names are written using English notation. You can change > this using the \language command. See [add reference to NR 1.1.1 "Note names > in other languages"]' Here I'm confused. The default note names are dutch. > 3. In NR 1.2.5 'Bar and bar number checks' I suggest adding a paragraph at > the bottom of the section: > > 'Note that if MIDI output is selected and volta repeats are in place, the bar > number check will fail. It is best to suppress MIDI output whle checking bar > numbers.' Can't comment on this, I've never used bar number checks. > 4. The characters allowed in variable names are only briefly touched upon: in > LR 2.4.1 the use of only alphabetic characters is mentioned as a convention, > while NR 3.1.5 states this as a requirement. In a LilyPond-user email David > Kastrup said "It's alphabetic characters in the ASCII set plus all non-ASCII > characters, potentially interspersed with isolated single underlines or > dashes." From other hints and experiments it appears that any characters are > allowed if the name is enclosed in double quotation marks. I suggest in NR > 3.1.5 'File Structure' in the bullet point 'A variable...' the last sentence > is replaced by: > > 'By convention, the name of a variable consists of upper- and lower-case > alphabetic characters only. In addition, non-ASCII characters and > non-adjacent single underscores and dashes are also allowed. Any combination > of characters is allowed if the variable name is enclosed in double quotation > marks.' > > I've changed David's wording slightly to be marginally more accurate (IMO). > This may need to be checked for accuracy. Here I'm undecided. For a while I used non-ASCII characters frequently. But menwhile I went back to use upper- and lower-case alphabetic characters only. Less cinfusing, imho Ofcourse, that's not the point... As long as it is allowed to use non-ASCII characters, it should be documented. The possibility to use arbitrary signs inside "" should be documented by all means. > 5. The context of the various \tag commands is not described. I had assumed > that they were lexical items, similar to many directives for conditional > compilation; this was not correct! I suggest adding the following text to NR > 3.3.2 'Using Tags', but I'm not sure of the best placement. Either close to > the top of the section, before the examples, or at the very end, before "see > also": > > 'Note that \keepWithTag and \removeWithTag are themselves music expressions > and so must appear within a \score block.' (devil's advokat:) \keepWithTag and \removeWithTag are music-functions and documented as such. They return music. Every music-function checks its argument(s), \keepWithTag needs music not score like multiple others, e.g. \transpose. This holds for every music-function (expecting music) and is documented at least in Extending 2.3.2 Music function usage. Is there any need to explain this for every music-function expecting music? Isn't the error-message sufficient? > 6. NR Section 3.2 'Titles and Headers" is very confusing: the word "header" > is used both for the \header command and for page headers. It is obviously > far too late to change the former, so I suggest that where page headers are > implied they should be mentioned explicitly. In detail, in NR 3.2.1 and 3.2.2 > the sections '...layout of headers and footers' be retitled: > > '...layout of page headers and footers'. Well, headers are a complete mess, imho. We do not only need to differentiate between, header and page-header, but headers for multiple books of a file, headers for each book of a file, header for each score and probably even for bookpart as well (can't remember). Each level, at least book(part)-level may take its own page-headers, and footers ... So your suggestion is likely only a first step. > 7. Contributor's Guide is a bit confusing. Section 1.2 'Overview of work > flow' paragraph 3 says that a contributor's patch needs to be approved for > inclusion (usually through the mailing list). But which mailing list? devel, > bug or user? And who does the approving? Consensus? I made one suggestion on > the user list and got 2 replies, one pro and one against. I can't suggest any > concrete text here as I don't (but would like to) know the answer. Well, in a certain way it's consensus. If someone objects, he/she will have some reasoning. You may want to fight for your patch, i.e. do some convincing work. This may be a better description/explanation what you aim at. Or you modify your patch to reflect the comments you've got, etc. Depends on the objector's reasoning. In general it's more straight-forward to set up git to submit patches. Then a formal review happens, including some standard tests. The bug-list is ok, better use the devel-list, imho. > Also - should it be "Contributors' Guide". Presumably you have more than one > contributor. No idea if this could be changed... Thanks again, Harm _______________________________________________ bug-lilypond mailing list bug-lilypond@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-lilypond
