Re: Issue 945 in lilypond: warning about \version for short snippets

[Mark Polesky]

> Currently we show a warning if there's no \version
> statement.  This is teh suck for the tutorial -- do we
> explain that people need to write
>   \version "2.12.0"
> before they've even learned what
>   { c'4 }
> means, or do we let their first view of lilypond be a
> warning?

Neither.  Just let them get their feet wet with an
error-free minimal example, even if they don't understand
every token.  We want users to *always* put the /version
statement, so let's not start with a poorly-written example.


> I see a few options:
> 1.  Suck it up and explain \version as the first thing.

Good.  But why even bother with an explanation?  LM 1.1.4
"Command-line" has the user entering this without explaining
the curly braces or single-quotes:

{
  c' e' g' e'
}

A lot of things are like this when first being learned:
  int main()
  #!/bin/bash
  etc...


> 2.  Suck it up and tell newbies to ignore the warning.
>     (IMO, that's even worse, since it trains them to
>     ignore warnings)

Bad.


> 3.  Do something intelligent in lilypond, like only
>     warning about \version if the input file is more than
>     10 lines long.

Bad.  It only takes one line to write an outdated .ly file.


> I prefer #3, of course.

I prefer adding the \version statement silently.  Curious
readers can remove it themselves and watch as the warning
appears.  It's explained eventually anyway, isn't it?

- Mark