Re: Doc music examples should be on 1 line

[Graham Percival]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 12:34 AM, Trevor Daniels <address@hidden> wrote:
> While answering a user question I noticed that
> some examples in the LM which were earlier on
> a single line now spread undesirably over two lines in both html and pdf
> versions.  You can
> see several examples in 4.5.3.
> I'm happy to fix these, but I'm not sure what I should change.  Can you
> suggest anything?

IIRC, the default lilypond-book options were changed some time around
2.13.6 or so.  It caused all the regtests to be marked as "changed",
which prompted a round of work on lilypond-book and the regtest
checking script, or something.  Oh wait, it was the hashing: we ended
up keeping the regtests with their original filenames.
I think this happened in Nov or Dec... it was definitely between Sep and Jan.

A quick glance at the exact .ly files of the first item in 4.5.3 in
2.13.13 and 2.12.3 supports this:
2.13.13:
\paper {
  indent = 0\mm
  line-width = 5.5\in
  line-width = 5.5\in - 2.0 * 0.4\in
  ragged-right = ##t
  force-assignment = #""
  line-width = #(- line-width (* mm  3.000000))
}

2.12.3:
\paper {
  #(define dump-extents #t)

  line-width = 160\mm - 2.0 * 0.4\in
  ragged-right = ##t
  indent = 0\mm
  force-assignment = #""
  line-width = #(- line-width (* mm  3.000000))
}


if google's calculator converter thingie is correct, then 2.13.13
gives snippets 119.38 mm, while 2.12.3 gives them 139.68.  As far as I
can tell, the other options are either the same, or have no effect.


A few options come to mind:
1) research why this changed (I know it was discussed on the mailing
list).  I'm certain that we accepted the reason for the change in the
first place, so find out why it changed, how important that reason(s)
were, and whether we have a different opinion now.  After suitable
research, discussion, and debate, revert the change.

2) accept the change as good, and start manually changing all relevant
examples.  Try to avoid using the maximum horizontal width in the
future in case the linewidth changes again.

There's going to be many more examples than only this; I'd say it's a
10-hour task to go check+fix all docs for this problem.
(being focused on this specific issue, and not getting distracted into
fixing other problems)

3) add a item in the tracker.  Documentation, low-priority.  Maybe
somebody will take a look at it during GOP.

Cheers,
- Graham