Re: doc work

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Mats,

> What's wrong with a template that gives you a MIDI file for free,  
> even if you didn't expect it.

In my experience — both personally (years ago) and seeing waves of  
newbies picking up Lilypond in the past few years — one of the most  
confusing parts about learning Lilypond is figuring out which code is  
necessary and which isn't.

\midi isn't necessary if you don't want a MIDI output file... but the  
code is included in every "simple" template, and so the implication  
is that it's essential code.

Furthermore, it takes more processing time to make the MIDI file,  
especially with very large files — why slow down the process when you  
don't need to?

> If I was a LilyPond beginner and suddenly discovered a MIDI file
> with the same name as my score PDF file, I would certainly get curious
> to listen to it and read more about that possibility in the manual.

And if I *didn't* want a bunch of extra files suddenly popping up in  
my directory (which I didn't, when I was starting out with Lilypond),  
then it would just irritate me to no end (which it did).

To take your argument to its (illogical) extreme, why don't we just  
add *all Lilypond features* into one "simple" template and let the  
Lilypond beginners "suddenly discover" everything that Lilypond can  
do all at once?  ;-)

Cheers,
Kieren.