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Re: Choral lyrics assistance, please.


From: Graham Percival
Subject: Re: Choral lyrics assistance, please.
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 03:59:01 -0800

Thanks for the detailed analysis!  Trevor might want to modify the
LM based on this -- I'm not certain if he knew how \book worked
when he wrote the sections... I know that *I* didn't (and still
don't) know how it works, and I'm the one who is theoretically
editing his work.  (that's why I always complain about getting
advanced readers to review the docs.  :)

One comment about the last point, that we shouldn't expect to
make it newbie-proof... while it's undoubtedly true that we can't
make the whole thing newbie-proof, the LM is most definitely
supposed to be newbie-proof.  The idea is that a newbie starts at
LM 1 and reads the whole thing; at each step of the way, we know
exactly what the newbie knows, and there should be no problems.
Once a newbie has finished reading the LM, he can progress to the
NR, and shouldn't have any difficulty reading any of those
sections.

My general observation is that new users get into trouble when
they try to skip over steps, or try learning about lilypond in
other ways (such as reading the computer-generated lilypond output
produced by NoteEdit... *shudder* ;).  This also applies to people
who started learning lilypond a year or more ago, and who think
that there's nothing of benefit to them in the LM.

Anyway, thanks again for the analyis!

Cheers,
- Graham


On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 11:51:02 +0100
Nicholas WASTELL <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:59:17 +0100
> Mats Bengtsson <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> >  ... there's no need to use 
> > \book here. If you just remove the "\book {" and matching "}", you
> > will get exactly the same result. If there's any information left
> > in the current manual that indicates that you need to explicitly
> > specify the \book command, please tell us, so we can clarify this
> > issue even further.
> 
> This was the route I took through the docs, once I had thought about
> using two separate scores to achieve what I wanted. Docs versions
> 2.11.37 (but a quick check shows that they are the same in .38).
> 
> LM 3.1.1 : "The \book command allows several \score blocks to be
> combined into one output." and then a link to NR 3.1.3.
> 
> By this time (as others have said on the list) I was looking for
> 'how-to', rather than 'if necessary'.  However, consider also:
> 
> LM 3.3.2 : "There can be only one top level context: the Score
> context. This is created with the \score command, or, in simple
> scores, it is created automatically."
> 
> So, the use of \book seemed to be the way to have two \score in one
> file.  I agree that NR 3.1.3 says quite clearly that \book is not
> necessary, but I didn't stay there very long. ;-)  The next step was
> to search LSR for '\book' (still looking for usage examples, rather
> than if it was necessary) and I found id=300, with example code for
> using \book.  I tried it and it worked, after some juggling with
> \paper.  I have to confess that I didn't search the list for \book
> because it was working by now.  If I had searched, I would have found
> that it wasn't necessary (I think that you have posted to two
> different questions just in the last couple of weeks -- sorry!) 
> 
> With this kind of forensic analysis, it's easy to see the silly
> mistakes and assumptions that I made.  I try to be reasonably
> diligent in researching as much as possible (hey, I'm the guy that
> never switches _anything_ on until I have read the instruction book!)
> but I could have done better, perhaps.  I'm not sure that I would
> ever have arrived at the solution offered by Trevor -- I'm not
> entirely clear why concurrent lyrics cannot be placed immediately
> after the Voice with which they are associated.  However, I will bank
> that experience now that I have met it.
> 
> More generally, I have found the tolerance of LilyPond with simple
> input, to be a two-edged sword.  It can be very useful for ease of
> entry and to get started with producing fantastic output, but it has
> lured me into a coding style which is not very robust for more
> complicated stuff.  After starting off using braces and
> angle-brackets very diligently, I found that many of them were not
> necessary, so they fell by the way.  Studying .ly output from
> NoteEdit, Canorus and LilyPondTool also led me to make assumptions
> when I should not have done, I think.
> 
> Anyway, I'm not sure that there is any immediate document change to
> be made -- just put it down to newbie errors!  The existing
> documentation for LilyPond is undoubtedly the best I have found for
> any FOSS software.  Just don't expect to make it newbie-proof!
> 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Nick.
> -- 
> Nicholas WASTELL
> France
> 
> 
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