Re: Is \paper{} needed?

[Juergen Reuter]

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:

> address@hidden writes:
> > On Monday 23 February 2004 11.59, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> > > address@hidden writes:
> > > > The manual says that \paper{} is required and several examples have an
> > > > empty \paper{}, but this doesn't seem (from experience) to be true in
> > > > 2.1.25 any more. Is this the manual being out of date, or LilyPond being
> > > > over-lenient?
> > >
> > > The default is to supply a \paper{} declaration if no output (paper,
> > > midi) is specified. Perhaps this default should be changed?
> > >
> > > Any objections?
> > 
> > AFAIK, the current default has been there a loong time (it was there 2 year 
> > ago when I first met lily).
> > 
> > For me, it is a good default.. it has the benefit is that it saves 8 
> > characters when I write short tests.
> 
> Funny.
> 
> I always have to add
> 
>  \paper{  raggedright = ##t }
> 
> for short tests anyway. Maybe that's a sensible solution? Having
> \paper{}/\midi{} correspond to \paper { raggedright = ##t } ?
> 

No, no, no!  I don't think that it is a good idea to have two different 
default values for a property such as raggedright: if you do not specify a 
\paper block at all, the default would be ##t, but if you say \paper{}, 
the default would be ##f.  This would be totally confusing for a new 
lilypond user, I guess.  Of course, it would be ok, if the default would 
be ##t in both cases, but I guess for real-life scores, most people most 
of the time prefer ##f?  So, better leave it ##f in both cases.

Greetings,
Juergen