Re: Absolute Beginners

[Manuel]

John, I very much welcome the chance of discussing some essential  
matters about teaching and learning, transmitting knowledge and  
abilities, and other matters. Allow me to go back in time.

According with modern anthropological theory, humans learn by  
imitating gestures. (See Clive Gamble, "The palaeolithical societies  
of Europe", sorry I can't say where in the book). Ancient man - not  
at all "primitive" - did not, when creating, abstractly conceive a  
stone tool and tried to adapt a raw stone to that idea, but acquired  
gestures from his equals and made them his own, to satisfy his needs.

So, giving information ist not a way to transmit knowledge and  
abilities, except if the recipient already knows what he's doing: an  
expert cook makes good use of a recipe book, a non-cook will probably  
bungle it.

Explaining things clearly and systematically is a part ot teaching,  
only a part, and it can be extremely difficult to anticipate the  
needs and wants of many possible learners, say, when writing a  
didactical book. All the more need to transmit knowledge and  
abilities by a "take-you-by-the-hand" method, even if it is virtually  
so.

"See this, I show you, do thus, note the ripples" - That's teaching!  
- but only good teaching if the teacher knows where he is taking you.

Now LilyPond is, of course, a work in progress. So is, obviously, its  
documentation. Both need time to evolve. I agree that the present  
situation is unclear, I don't understand which document to use or  
even where to find something I need. Perhaps one day the many  
different things can be mainly relegated to an archive, like older  
versions of the program, to be consulted by whoever wants to, but not  
generally offered to the beginner or the expert user.

A most frustating thing when trying to use the tutorial is that the  
proposed examples just too often don't compile as they supposedly  
should, as with the very first example.

Although I agree that having one didactical introduction and one  
reference work is a good idea, don't forget that even a reference  
work must be somewhat didactical, since even the expert is learning.

To split the chapter into several HTML sections is possible. Due to  
my lack of experience, I don't see why not use the .pdf format for  
downloading, or HTML format for the whole chapter in one page (indeed  
there is now the whole tutorial in a single HTML document). The  
splitting would nevertheless necessitate further elaboration. In any  
case, I believe in field-testing and in test-versions (called beta, I  
suppose). One possibility would be to offer the first and following  
chapters (I have started work on a second chapter now that the first  
has reached at least a first completion) perhaps creating a  
beginner's section in the documentation, maybe "LilyPond's Nursery  
Slopes".

To insert parts of the beginners guide into the present tutorial  
would cancel most of its didactical, "take-you-by-the-hand"  
structure, which should hang together to be clear and useful, instead  
of being cut and mixed with parts of another work, however good,  
written at another time and with other concepts in mind. But yes, one  
didactical help and a deeper going reference work should be enough in  
general terms. I can't really say, but as a general idea, could the  
present, official tutorial be merged with the present reference  
document? I say this because the tutorial is already a rather  
reference-oriented work. Indeed I thought that its last part was the  
reference document itself.

So yes, I would like to go on working on this. I would need some help  
though, when I cannot figure something for myself, like it happened  
with the Da Capo thing. Of course I'll look it up in the manual first.


Manuel