Re: review new info on file layout

[Erik Sandberg]

On Friday 03 February 2006 21.12, Mats Bengtsson wrote:
> Quoting Erik Sandberg <address@hidden>:
> I would say the opposite, since in all other situations \new is used like
> \new Lyrics {...} or \new Lyrics \with {...} {...}. If you insert
> \lyricsto inbetween, people might get the the impression that
> \lyricsto is part of the \new Lyrics construct. If you want to exaggerate
> the pedagogics, I would even propose to say
> \lyricsto mytune { \new Lyrics {...} }
> to make it really clear what \lyricsto does (I hope it's legal syntax,
> haven't checked).

Then I'd propose this instead:
\new Lyrics { \lyricsto mytune { ... } }
because it feels relevant to me to consequently create contexts as top-level 
as possible. (hm.. the outer {} in my example are still confusing though, 
since lyricsto never can be part of anything sequential)

> > I think lily does create separate staves for the voices in this case,
> > but it's
> > not at all clear, and adding \new Staff statements explicitly makes the
> > semantics clearer.
>
> We have lots of optional constructs in the syntax, { c } is actually a
> short-cut for
> \book{\score{\new Staff{\new Voice{ c }}}}
> (maybe I missed something). 
yes, you can add a \new Score inbetween also, and empty layout and header 
blocks.
> I think this is one major source of confusion 
> but of course it's also convenient. My personal view is that we should
> make at least some of these parts compulsory again (especially \score),
> since it really only saves a significant portion of key-strokes when
> you write an example file with one or two bars, but not really for any
> real music.

I think the shorthand without score is highly relevant:
- Lots of music is just short snippets. See e.g. regression tests, LSR and bug 
archive.
- Suppose that Wikipedia begins to use lily. They will probably support 
constructs such as <music> {c d e f } </music> regardless of whether lily 
forces \score. People who learn lily from wikipedia should be able to use the 
syntax they learnt there directly.

-- 
Erik