Re: Constructive Criticism and a Question

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > Only a native speaker can say that :-) Honestly, it's very easy to
> > intermix them during fast typing.  I don't say that the difference
> > between those two words is problematic, just that it unnecessarily
> > increases the probability of a typo.
>
> I respectfully disagree.  I've never mistyped either word in a
> LilyPond file.

Congratulations!  I do it regularly.

> should be asking for the elimination of the "\" symbol?  And how
> many times have I seen the query ". . . Score.RehersalMark
> . . . doesn't work."  Should we change that to "R-mark" to avoid
> typos?

This is harmless compared to `acciaccatura' :-)

> Apostrophes ("'") are a problem too: it's hard to see them when
> you're looking for errors; let's replace them with something clear
> like "*".

It seems that you should write your scores with MusicXML...  This
greatly increases verbosity...

To be serious: Do you see a necessity for a basic LilyPond command to
be an abbreviation of another?  Just think of editors which are able
to complete a command with the tab key as soon as you type the first
few letters (Emacs, for example).  In case of \time vs. \times, you
always have to add a final `s' or select between two choices.

It would be interesting to do a survey whether there are other
commands belonging into this category.  I favour to rename them all to
disambiguate.


   Werner