Re: Contemporary music documentation

[Carl Sorensen]

On 9/5/09 7:12 PM, "Graham Percival" <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 05, 2009 at 06:57:59AM -0600, Carl Sorensen wrote:
>> 
>> On 9/4/09 6:03 PM, "Graham Percival" <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 
>>> address@hidden:~/src/lilypond/Documentation/notation$ grep
>>> \\\\override editorial.itely expressive.itely pitches.itely
>>> repeats.itely rhythms.itely simultaneous.itely staff.itely
>>> text.itely | wc
>>>      72     465    4521
>> 
>> I think your grep is mistaken.  The autobeaming stuff isn't \override, but
>> \overrideAutoBeamSettings (in 2.12) and \overrideBeamSettings (in 2.13.4).
> 
> Well, those are still tweaks, right?  And \\\\override matches
> anything that starts "\overide".
> 
>> When GLISS comes along, I think that name will have to go.  Just like you
>> don't want \setFoo instead of \set Context.foo, we don't want
>> \overridePropertySetting #value instead of \override property = #value.
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> But I believe that *all* tweaks have been removed from the autobeaming
>> documentation.
> 
> Hmm.  This could be a meaningless semantic quibble, or it could be
> something that's fundamental to the docs, GLISS, and development
> in general.  Is a change to the autobeaming, done via
> \overrideAutoBeamSettings, consititude a "tweak"?  Offhand, I'd
> say "yes".


No, I don't think they are tweaks. That is a defined command to achieve a
particular behavior.

In my opinion, a call to \overrideBeamSettings is fundamentally equivalent
to a call to \hideNotes.   It's specific defined LilyPond syntax.

On the other hand while \override and \set are LilyPond syntax, they are so
general that virtually anything can be done with them.  In my mind, that's
why we don't want them in the text body; we can't reasonably maintain
totally flexible syntax.

> 
> Beside that point, look at NR 1.6.2.  Now, Staff symbol is a
> disaster, but Ossia?  It would a very different doc section if we
> had no tweaks in there.
> (that said, this is probably a great example of a place where we
> should add predefined commands... could we change:
>     \new Staff \with {
>       \remove "Time_signature_engraver"
>       alignAboveContext = #"main"
>       fontSize = #-3
>       \override StaffSymbol #'staff-space = #(magstep -3)
>       \override StaffSymbol #'thickness = #(magstep -3)
>       firstClef = ##f
>     }
> to
>     \new Staff \with {
>       \ossiaSize
>     }
> ? Probably not, which is why people were talking about making a
> \new SmallStaff  context.
> 
> There's also 1.7.1 Selecting notation font size.  I think the
> \set fontSize = #3  commands aren't a bad thing in this context.
> 
> 
> Such items are very much the exception, but I think a few
> exceptions are useful.
> 

I agree that a few exceptions are useful, but the more we can move toward
predefineds for commonly used functions, the better off we are.

> 
>> At any rate, I don't think we should be *adding* new sections with tweaks in
>> the main text to NR1+2.
> 
> Hmm.  In this case, I'm with Trevor -- Joseph is all fired up
> about this, so let's allow him to write those docs.  We might need
> to change them later, but that can be done as part of GDP2.

I agree.

Carl