Re: Set indent based on instrument name (issue 6457049)

[David Kastrup]

Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:

> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 02:14:17PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> And if you think this is purely hypothetical, check out
>> Documentation/snippets/incipit.ly.
>
> David, thank you for identifying a specific problematic example.
>
>> There are exceptions to every rule.  But if you are calling for an
>> exception because you lack the skills for following the rule, it is
>> unlikely that your skills are sufficient for correctly identifying the
>> exception.
>
> I think this is a bit too far.  Phil is trying to solve a
> long-standing *extremely* annoying bug for documentation writers
> which has not attracted much attention from "real" programmers.

I can't actually help here since either problem description or what the
patch is trying to achieve is utterly absent from the issue.

<URL:http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=2703>

"Set indent based on instrument name" is all that is described
anywhere.  _How_ the indent is supposed to be based on instrument names,
_when_ it is supposed to be based on instrument names, _what_ instrument
names it is supposed to be base on, _which_ indent is supposed to be
based on instrument names, _what_ problem this is trying to solve:

I draw a blank.  I can't even suggest what variables and organization to
use here since I have no clue what the problem is, and what the solution
tries to achieve.

> I don't think that he realizes that he's asking for an exemption,
> so no need to be rude about it.  Please either give us some hints
> about how to store the information in an acceptable manner,

I can't since I have no idea what the code is supposed to do.  At the
current point of time I am pretty much reduced to stating that whatever
the code may be trying to do, it will not work reliably, and point out
why.

But I can't help doing it right if I don't even get a chance to guess
_what_ to do right.

> or wait until Keith or Mike or somebody else has time to help.  Phil
> is *precisely* the kind of person that we want to be helping with
> lilypond, so please don't discourage him.

Well, he is trying to take a shortcut here.  I can tell him that the
shortcut is a dead end, but I since I have no idea where he actually
wants to go, I can't suggest an alternative path.

-- 
David Kastrup