John, I very much welcome the chance of discussing some essential
matters about teaching and learning, transmitting knowledge and
abilities, and other matters. Allow me to go back in time.
According with modern anthropological theory, humans learn by
imitating gestures. (See Clive Gamble, "The palaeolithical societies
of Europe", sorry I can't say where in the book). Ancient man - not
at all "primitive" - did not, when creating, abstractly conceive a
stone tool and tried to adapt a raw stone to that idea, but acquired
gestures from his equals and made them his own, to satisfy his needs.
So, giving information ist not a way to transmit knowledge and
abilities, except if the recipient already knows what he's doing: an
expert cook makes good use of a recipe book, a non-cook will probably
bungle it.
Explaining things clearly and systematically is a part ot teaching,
only a part, and it can be extremely difficult to anticipate the
needs and wants of many possible learners, say, when writing a
didactical book. All the more need to transmit knowledge and
abilities by a "take-you-by-the-hand" method, even if it is virtually
so.
"See this, I show you, do thus, note the ripples" - That's teaching!
- but only good teaching if the teacher knows where he is taking you.
Now LilyPond is, of course, a work in progress. So is, obviously, its
documentation. Both need time to evolve. I agree that the present
situation is unclear, I don't understand which document to use or
even where to find something I need. Perhaps one day the many
different things can be mainly relegated to an archive, like older
versions of the program, to be consulted by whoever wants to, but not
generally offered to the beginner or the expert user.
A most frustating thing when trying to use the tutorial is that the
proposed examples just too often don't compile as they supposedly
should, as with the very first example.
Although I agree that having one didactical introduction and one
reference work is a good idea, don't forget that even a reference
work must be somewhat didactical, since even the expert is learning.
To split the chapter into several HTML sections is possible. Due to
my lack of experience, I don't see why not use the .pdf format for
downloading, or HTML format for the whole chapter in one page (indeed
there is now the whole tutorial in a single HTML document). The
splitting would nevertheless necessitate further elaboration. In any
case, I believe in field-testing and in test-versions (called beta, I
suppose). One possibility would be to offer the first and following
chapters (I have started work on a second chapter now that the first
has reached at least a first completion) perhaps creating a
beginner's section in the documentation, maybe "LilyPond's Nursery
Slopes".
To insert parts of the beginners guide into the present tutorial
would cancel most of its didactical, "take-you-by-the-hand"
structure, which should hang together to be clear and useful, instead
of being cut and mixed with parts of another work, however good,
written at another time and with other concepts in mind. But yes, one
didactical help and a deeper going reference work should be enough in
general terms. I can't really say, but as a general idea, could the
present, official tutorial be merged with the present reference
document? I say this because the tutorial is already a rather
reference-oriented work. Indeed I thought that its last part was the
reference document itself.
So yes, I would like to go on working on this. I would need some help
though, when I cannot figure something for myself, like it happened
with the Da Capo thing. Of course I'll look it up in the manual first.
Manuel
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