Re: templates and "official" styles

[Graham Percival]

On 27-Aug-04, at 1:14 AM, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> address@hidden writes:
> > The question of an "official" LilyPond style comes up every so often.
> > (ie something like "always begin with a \version string, then
> > the \headers.  Violinx should be written as violinOne, violinTwo, 
> > etc")
>
> Because the Lilypond doesn't care what users do. It's more that we
> want to have a uniform style so our manual and examples look uniform.
> Better that we don't set Official Guidelines, rather, we could present
> our style as an option.

That's what I mean.  Once a new user has gotten past the beginning 
steps,
many want to make sure they're doing things properly.  At least, I 
certainly
did, and from the sounds of things, many others users also want some
reassurance that they're doing things in a good way.

I can't think of anything to recommend other than
- version numbers on all files.
- if there's anything complicated, only have one bar per line.
- for large projects, separate the \notes{} from the \score{}.  
Depending
on user feedback, we _might_ want to suggest a file naming scheme.  
Again,
I know it totally doesn't matter, but it could make uncertain new users
feel more secure.
- comment your files, with bar numbers ever 10 bars or so.  Even if you
know how your piece goes when you first create it, if you go back to
work on the piece after two years, you won't remember.  And it's quite
annoying to be trying to figure out where bar 83 is.  (yes, you could 
just
set up point-and-click.  But if you don't have that working, for 
whatever
reason, it's good to see "% bar 80" somewhere in your file)

It's pretty much all common sense, but I know at least one user who
lacked common sense when he began using LilyPond.  :)

> FWIW, I always use the emacs standard mode settings, which does 4
> space indents. However, the manual does not use standard indents.
> 2 space indents makes more sense for the space constrained manual.
>
> Maybe we ought to set our standard to two spaces, and move all manual
> examples to 2 spaces. Jan?

You realize that was a joke, right?  :)

Although now that I think about it, I used 2-space indents in the
Example Templates section.  But it was a pure coincidence that I picked
"2-space tabs" for my "code style issue that doesn't matter, but people
discuss anyway".

Cheers,
- Graham