Re: Question about error message

[Graham Percival]

On 2-Feb-06, at 7:22 PM, Jay Hamilton, Sound and Silence wrote:

> When I leave out the end bracket to a triplet figure in line 18,23/24 
> (in jedit) [see example below]  the error message is that I have 
> something wrong with
> score\
> \new Staff \ melody
>
> when in fact the problem is way before that - a missing bracket.
> This doesn't make sense to me, can someone explain it?

Two explanations:
1)  Error detection is hard -- by assumption, something is wrong with 
the file, and computers don't deal with unexpected input very easily.

2)  Since the bracket isn't there, lilypond thinks that you're defining 
a \score outside of the main body of the lilypond file (or outside of a 
\book).

I mean, how _should_ lilypond know that you only intended to have three 
notes inside the \times?  Remember that \times 2/3{ a8 a a b b b} is 
perfectly valid input.

- Graham