Re: Your Friendly Neighborhood LSR

[Mats Bengtsson]

Rune Zedeler wrote:
> Valentin Villenave skrev:
>
> >     --> First rule of LSR is: do not add a \version line.
> >     --> Second rule of LSR is: do NOT add a \version line.
>
> What is the reason for this?
> The version line might be good information to have - at least in a 
> comment. If a snippet stops behaving correctly, the original author of 
> the snippet is gone, nobody any longer really remembers what the 
> snippet was supposed to do - then the version line will give a hint on 
> which ancient lilypond to use in order to see the snippet as the 
> contributor intended.
> Automatically commenting out version lines - and automatically 
> complaining if the snippet asks for a wrong version - should be quite 
> simple.

I have some similar thoughts. I definitely think that the .ly code shown 
when
you click on a snippet should include a \version line (even if it isn't 
stored
internally in the database). This is crucial information for the end 
user, who
maybe isn't always using the latest version (or has already updated to an
unstable version) and doesn't realize why a snippet doesn't work as
expected. Also, it's not easy to find information the LSR web pages on
what version you are currently using. The only place I could find is under
"Contributing", which is not a place where an end user is expected to look.

However, Rune has also got a point that it would
be good to know at least about the last version where we are sure that the
snippet worked as originally intended. Valentin, I think it was you who
sent some questions some half year ago when you tried to understand and
update snippets that were outdated (and had not even been updated
correctly with convert-ly). In the upgrade to the next stable version, I'm
sure that you will make sure to use convert-ly and manually review every
snippet to make sure that it produces correct output, but especially for 
more
complex snippets it may still be easy to miss that there have been some
unintentional changes in the result.

Regarding information on the original author, this would certainly be useful
for the LSR maintainer, but there are also good reasons not to publish names
on a public web page, at least not with an email address.