Re: Allows for easier creation of many Lilypond objects via Scheme. (issue 7009047)

[David Nalesnik]

On Mon, Dec 24, 2012 at 7:22 AM, address@hidden
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On 24 déc. 2012, at 10:36, address@hidden wrote:
>
> On 2012/12/24 07:28:17, mike7 wrote:
>
> On 24 déc. 2012, at 01:10, mailto:address@hidden wrote:
>
>
>> All of this is absolutely devastatingly horrible code that is not
>> reconcilable with sane per-session semantics and tampers with
>
> LilyPond
>
>> internals in a way that has bleed-over effects into future files in
>
> the
>
>> same command line.
>>
>> In addition, the interfaces into the exposed internals are
>
> absolutely
>
>> horrific and cryptic and don't make any sense as a user interface.
>>
>
>
> I agree that the innards I'm exposing are not coded particularly
> well
>
>
> You don't get the point.  A user interface is not supposed to "expose
> innards", it is supposed to provide functionality.  Pulling data
> structures and some of the code accessing them into the open is not a
> user interface.
>
>
> I am certainly not saying that this type of task is for every user, but
> someone comfortable enough to do this should not have to copy and paste from
> define-*.scm every time.
>
>> This is taking everything that is broken with
>> input/regression/scheme-text-spanner.ly, magnifies it to a number of
>> other cases, and gives it a bad interface.
>
>
>
> I am of the opinion that it is better to have stuff like this that
> allows people to do creative and interesting things with LilyPond
> than not have it at all.
>
>
> But those "creative and interesting things" will break frequently on
> update.  We already have quite a bit of "why doesn't this stuff I
> based on [some version of] scheme-text-spanner.ly not work in my
> version of LilyPond?" questions.
>
>
> It seems like you'd rather not make something accessible rather than making
> it accessible in a fragile state.  I certainly prefer the latter, as it
> allows more people to experiment.  For example, David's work on the frame
> engraver would be a great trial ground for this sort of thing.
>

I've gotten a lot of use out of techniques in
scheme-text-spanner.ly--that's probably very evident--and I'm quite
appreciative that it's there.  I understand the problems that it
causes--I've seen evidence of bleed-over.  However, I'm using these
techniques as a convenient aid to developing new features.  I could
certainly work directly in LilyDev and alter the necessary files in
the proper way, but then I'm unable to get feedback from those users
who would actively use the new features but aren't comfortable
applying patches.  You can see just how much user feedback I got
during the creation of the measure counter (issue 2445).  As far as
the frame engraver goes, I've gotten a good sense of what such a thing
ought to do, and corrected several problems based on input from
lilypond-user.  My efforts here are still quite a way from producing a
formal patch and putting it up for review, but that is the end goal.

Best,
David