address@hidden writes:
The documentation should be updated.
If I may, I'd like to say something about the documentation in general.
From an end-user standpoint I'd have to say that the docs are the weakest
part of Lilypond. I don't mean to say that they're bad. I'm sure it is
all very well documented. What I find problematic is that the docs go from
a fairly simple example of HOW THINGS WORK straight to a gory-details
nuts-and-bolts description of the minute workings of the program. I don't
have a problem with that, either. What I find lacking is much of anything
in-between. For example:
\property Score.MultiMeasureRest \override #'expand-limit = #9
...was exactly what I needed to adjust the block rest behavior. I didn't
need several paragraphs of dense description of how this mechanism works.
That I can save for later.
As Mats points out, one of the major problems is that there are
hundreds of ways (literally: 1.7.14 has 276 different backend
properties) in which output can be tuned. The real question is how we
make all this information accessible in a sensible way. The current
internals documentation is a try, but I'm sure it can be improved.
This problem is not unique to Lilypond. Other packages, for example
SCORE, also have tons and tons of formatting options that take a long
time to learn.