Re: '-signs in vectors - postulated in LM

[David Kastrup]

Thomas Morley <address@hidden> writes:

> Due to the discussion started here:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2012-12/msg00025.html
> I thought about a patch removing all the superfluous '-signs in
> vectors from the docs.
>
> Starting the work on it, I noticed that the LM explicitly postulates them:
> /Documentation/learning/tweaks.itely
> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.17/Documentation/learning/visibility-and-color-of-objects
>
> Questions:
> (1)
> Is there an agreement, that the '-signs should be deleted?
> (2)
> If yes, than there is not only need for removing them, but to rewrite
> that section of the LM.
> Should this be done in one patch, or in follow-ups?

    Issue 2916: Document \hide and \omit
    
    Also fixes a few other inaccuracies.

is currently on countdown, and "a few other inaccuracies" happens to
cover part of the problem.  I just noticed that the file
Documentation/learning/tweaks.itely generally talks a lot of nonsense
about vectors, calling them a "list preceded by '#", which is rather
misleading since at no time they are a list, and something like
'# (2 3 4)
would not even work: #( is a lexical unit.  If there was a "list"
involved, one would be able to write a space before (.  So while 2916
fixes a few of the vector-related inaccuracies, it does not do so
completely.

If we don't have agreement on (1), issue 2916 should likely not be
committed in the current form, but the "inaccuracies" fixed in there
concern quite more than just the removal of the quote character.  It
very much looks like the author of the sections talking about vectors
and/or the reviewers were not really familiar with them.

-- 
David Kastrup