Re: Gets rid of length in the docs. (issue 4965053)

[Mike Solomon]

On Aug 30, 2011, at 1:27 PM, Graham Percival wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 01:07:46PM +0200, Mike Solomon wrote:
>> Bad: the user has to use a new syntax - instead of \override Stem #'length = 
>> #5, they need to type \override Stem #'Y-extent = #(stem::length 5)
> 
> What's the difference (from your end) between #(stem::length 5)
> and #5 ?
> 

Aside from the fact that one uses stem::length and one doesn't, I don't know, 
which is why I'm the wrong guy to ask about UI :)

In current master, #'Y-extent = #(stem::length 5) does exactly what #'length = 
#5 did a week ago.

I believe that Trevor is claiming that #(stem::length 5) is worse from a 
UI-perspective than #5.  I think he is right insofar as stem::length means 
there are more things to type, but I think that if the person has gotten to the 
point where they are doing tweaks, they can write #(stem::length 5) instead of 
#5 with little to no extra mental overhead (especially if it is explained in 
the docs).  However, I may be underestimating how difficult the LilyPond user 
experience is - I do know that when I started using LilyPond, numbers seemed 
friendlier to me than things in parentheses.

Cheers,
MS