Re: names of vertical spacing dimensions

[Carl Sorensen]

On 10/12/10 4:20 PM, "Wols Lists" <address@hidden> wrote:

>  On 12/10/10 14:02, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
>> Hi James,
>> 
>>> I still think a *user* (not programmer or code developer) is going to really
>>> get frustrated when they don't know what a system is i.e... 'oh you mean the
>>> stuff with the notes in...we call that a 'score' where I come from.
>> The entire music engraving world -- not just Lilypond, but Finale/Sib/etc.
>> and the traditional hand-engravers -- call a single line of music spanning
>> the width of a single page a "system", and the entire collection of systems a
>> "score".
>> 
>> If Lilypond users are confused because they don't have an understanding of
>> that basic and universal terminology, they should read (1) some engraving
>> books, and (2) the Lilypond introductory documentation.
> 3) Take a basic music theory course.
> 
> For a musician to get that wrong is as seriously incompetent as for a
> computer guy to refer to a hard disk as ram (I know the
> man-in-the-street tends to call them both "memory").
> 

Yes, but some of us who use LilyPond don't qualify as musicians.  When I
first started using LilyPond, I didn't know all the terminology I know now.
In particular, "system" was not part of my understanding.  It was on the
LilyPond lists that I learned what a system was.

Let's not avoid teaching people the terminology just because they already
"ought to know it".

Thanks,

Carl