Re: lilypond programming manual

[Trevor Daniels]

Graham Percival wrote Monday, September 28, 2009 8:14 PM


> On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 06:53:26PM -0600, Carl Sorensen wrote:
> > On 9/27/09 11:55 AM, "John Mandereau" <address@hidden> 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Le dimanche 27 septembre 2009 à 17:37 +0100, Graham Percival a 
> > > écrit :
> > > Certainly.  However, when we decide time has come to 
> > > significantly
> > > expand this appendix and it gets too big to remain an appendix, 
> > > we'll
> > > have to reword the reading guidelines so the reader doesn't 
> > > feel he
> > > should even read this chapter, e.g. by recommending that "all 
> > > this
> > > manual should be read from cover to cover, except the last 
> > > chapter
> > > "Scheme tutorial", that can be read later to make better use of 
> > > Chapters
> > > 5 and 6 of the Notation Reference, for example."
> >
> > I think that my preference would actually to create a LilyPond 
> > Programming
> > manual, with the Scheme Tutorial and a rewritten NR6.  I don't 
> > think that
> > NR6 is actually Notation Reference.  That particular chapter has 
> > seemed to
> > me to be out of place anyway.
>
> I like this idea;

So do I

> we could even make the IR into a series of
> appendices for this programming manual.

No, the IR is an essential reference for anyone
doing overrides in pure LilyPond syntax. It's
extensively referenced even in the LM.  It
shouldn't be hidden behind a manual about Scheme.

> The immediate question is whether we should bother doing it now.
> I'm not talking about actually writing it -- we definitely can't
> do anything other than moving doc sections around and slightly
> changing the IR generation from scheme.  So
> 1) do we set everything up, and have a half-baked manual?
> (which is admittedly still no less useful than the current
> situation)
>
> 2) do we keep the status quo, and deal with the moving files
> around later?
>
> My preference is for #1;

Mine too.

Like Carl, I would prefer a manual name that
suggests it describes how to extend LilyPond's
functionality.  Of his suggestions I prefer
"Extending LilyPond".

Trevor