Re: define-void-function or define-procedure ?

[Carl Sorensen]

On 10/19/11 3:14 PM, "David Kastrup" <address@hidden> wrote:

>
>>
>> I am not enthused about this particular consequence of auto-exporting
>> Scheme expressions.  I currently don't see a better way of handling it,
>> and it has flagged more bad code than false positives when I tried it.
>> But I would be quite surprised if it did not trigger regressions with
>> existing previously valid and reasonable code.

I think if we're finding bad code, it's probably an improvement.  But to
the extent that we break valid code, it's a problem.

>
>An afterthought, however: we do have an inordinate amount of user-level
>commands that need to be called from Scheme rather than with Lilypond
>syntax.  That does not make sense.  Void music functions have been
>around for eternities, just a bit inconvenient to define, but reasonably
>documented.

I think that there has been some feeling in the past that defining void
functions and using lilypond mode to handle these commands is just
syntactic sugar.

To the extent that we are cleaning up the parser and simplifying things,
there is now justification for eliminating direct scheme expressions and
replacing them with void music functions.

Allowing users to access all of the out-of-the-box functionality of
LilyPond without having to execute scheme functions seems to me to be a
worthwhile design goal.  Having  scheme functions used to extend LilyPond
makes sense; using them for base functionality not so much.

I think you are moving things in a great direction here!

>
>Maybe we need a user interface meister that tries to maintain a bit of
>coherency and sanity when new features get added.

It seems to me that you are functioning as the UI meister right now.  And
you're doing a great job of it -- not just trying to get new interfaces to
be sane, but pointing out where there is insanity in the existing
interfaces.

Thanks,

Carl