Re: Lilypond Syntax Development and 3.0

[Valentin Villenave]

2009/7/27 Graham Percival <address@hidden>:
> Lilypond Syntax Development   (tentative name)

How about "Grand Syntax Project", for Graham-ish consistency's sake? :-)

> However, I think we now have a critical mass of interested users,
> experience with the syntax, and developers.  I therefore propose
> to have a Grand Project devoted to stabilizing the lilypond input
> format.

I second this.


> Goal: define an input format which we commit to being
> machine-updateable for the forseeable future.  Any future patches
> which change the syntax in a non-convert-ly-able format will be
> rejected.  (subject to the limitations, below)
> Once this is finished, we will release lilypond 3.0.


> LIMITATIONS and SCOPE
>
> - we need standards for the location of commands.  Ligature
>  brackets, I'm looking at you.  (non-postfix notation must die!)

Yes it must.

> - we obviously can't /guarantee/ that we'll /never/ make any
>  non-convert-ly changes in the basic format.  But we *can*
>  guarantee that such changes would force lilypond 4.0, and
>  that we would only do so for overwhelmingly good reasons.

For the past couple of years, the LilyPond language has become
increasingly consistent, as "exotic" command names tend to be
replaced:

#(set-octavation 1) -> \ottava #1
\fatText -> \textLengthOn/Off
\sustainDown/Up -> \sustainOn/Off

> - We're going to have lots and lots of emails flying around.  They
>  don't really fit into either -devel or -user, so we'll use a
>  mailist on lilynet.net.  Maybe the already-created proposals
>  mailist, maybe a address@hidden mailist.

Anyone interested in this may already have a look at
lists.lilynet.net/proposals (though it is not meant to be an official
mailing list, it might be a good start).

> - I could be convinced to use the lilynet wiki for this project,
>  although we'd need account-locked pages, and it would increase
>  my workload.

Some of us can take care of the wiki part.

> - after the initial discussion of proposals has died down, I'll
>  bring it to -devel.  We're not going to make any (significant)
>  changes without discussing it on -devel, but we're going to
>  have huge threads about English grammar and silly ideas, and
>  I don't want to clutter up -devel.  Once whatever chaotic
>  silliness on the syntax list is settled down, I'll bring the
>  ideas to -devel.

Absolutely. The more we keep -devel clean, the less we risk losing
track of patches and important discussions.

> Reinhold and Frederick: as you may have guessed, I'm proposing
> that your patch waits until 3.0.  Anything requiring such manual
> tweaks will make some people very unhappy, such as mutopia.

Another possibility would be to have a "3.0 release meister", who
could start maintaining a separate alpha branch for major
syntax-breaking changes only, while non-syntax work goes on on 2.16.
While maintaining LilyPond 2.x remains the absolute priority, this
would allow us to take our time with the other branch.

Every now and then, we could even publish 3.0 pre-beta GUB builds, on
a lilynet-hosted ftp, as an unofficial semi-public testing period (of
course, bug reports wouldn't belong on the official tracker, but we
could have a special wiki category or something).
Of course, this may require more resources than we have.

Regards,
Valentin