error: parse error

[Peter Dobratz]

While editing lilypond input files, I often (although with more practice not 
quite as much) have errors.  The most of the time results in the following:

error: parse error

Not only is this completely redudant (if something bad happened after lilypond 
said it was parsing, it must obviously be a parse error), it provides little 
suggestions for the cause of the error.  The most common cause of this is any 
of ( ) \( \) ~ \< \> \! < or > being in the wrong order.  Usually changing the 
order of these fixes the problem, although forgetting a > can be extremely 
difficult to pin down.

One possible solution to this problem would be to improve the emacs mode.  For 
example, after using color syntax highlighting and automatic indentation for 
Java programs, I eliminate a lot of the standard typographical errors (oops, 
forgot that semi-colon) before I even go to compile the code.  It would be 
spiff if the lilypond mode could somehow know which symbols belong where and 
maybe even prevent you from adding extra \property \revert statements.

Peter Dobratz