Re: Aligning relative to page - Use OOoLilyPond

[Valentin Villenave]

2007/7/12, Paul Harouff <address@hidden>:
> Valentin,
>
> I'm not trying to start an email flame war. But it really bothers me when
> programmers get condescending with users, implying that we are stupid if we
> can't understand the documentation, or if we don't have all hundreds of
> pages of snippets using complex overrides and Scheme tweaks memorized.

I fully understand your point;
-yes, LilyPond could be (and will hopefully become in a few years)
more user-friendly;

-no, I'm not a programmer at all; just an average user (I've been
using LilyPond for 6 months or so), so this isn't about coders vs
users at all

-you have the absolute right to not understand the documentation; this
is why I always add snippets and improvements whenever there is an
obvious lack

-"snippets using complex overrides and Scheme tweaks": there is
neither any "complex" \override *or* Scheme tweak in the LSR snippet
you mention. I don't mean it is self-explanatory, but this is why it
comes, in the LSR, with some instructions and explanations.

> The problem with the LilyPond documentation is that users have to understand
> Scheme in order to understand LilyPond. A programming language should be
> completely self contained. My impression is that about 30-40% of all of the
> examples in the documentation include Scheme code to make the LilyPond code
> work.

As an "average" user (and _not_ a programmer, once again), I
understand your impression. Indeed, LilyPond is based on Scheme, and I
have had the same impression when I started using LilyPond. Scheme
functions, etc, are still very scary too me and I never use any
(except, once in a while, and without trying to understand why, the #
character which seems to be Scheme related).

> I still haven't figured out when plain "text" quotes are adequate for a
> command, and when #"text" scheme contants are needed for a command. And what
> the heck does a #' mean with some of the commands? In other words, reading
> the documentation, I can't figure out which commands are LilyPond commands
> and which are Scheme commands. There are pages and pages of context and
> variable names without a clue as to what they mean or how a user
> off-the-street is supposed to change their values.

Yes, working on your problem I realized maybe the "overview of text
markup commands" page could be improved. I'm thinking about possible
improvements, but haven't really found the time yet. At least, now the
LSR snippet is here to help users.

> I guess you could say I have a love-hate relationship with LilyPond. I love
> the parts that are intuitively obvious and I hate the parts that I can't
> figure out without wasting days of trial and error.

This is how open-source works. All we can do is make things better and
easier, day after day.

> Your LSR explanation incorrectly implies that \fill-line is equivalent to
> center.

Nope; I said it "does the same". But you're right, \fill-line is much,
much more powerful :)

> The correct explanation is that \fill-line equally spaces all of the text
> objects in the list across the width of the page. If there is only one
> object, then the behavior of \fill-line results in it being centered.
>
> \fill-line {The quick brown fox}
> results in something like:
>
> The              quick                      brown                   fox
>
> \fill-line {"The quick brown fox"}
> results in something like:
>
>                         The quick brown fox

This is a very good explanation: I added it to
http://lsr.dsi.unimi.it/LSR/Item?id=244

> Whereas,
> \center-align {The quick brown fox}
> results in something like:
>
>  The
> quick
> brown
>  fox
>
> and
> \center-align {"The quick brown fox"}
> results in something like:
>
> brown fox

This is the issue we're discussing with Rune on the other thread...

[...]

> spacing issues which are perfectly illustrated in Valentin's LSR snippet. A
> \markup always gravitates closer to the score after it, which makes
> formatting  the twelve verses of my sample third antiphon above nearly
> impossible.

I already asked you what's wrong with this snippet; what precisely
makes it impossible?

> I gave up trying to understand the \markup documentation when I discovered I
> could use OOoLilyPond to create png score snippets for each hymn that I
> could paste into MS Word documents containing the text of the church
> service. Then I have complete WYSIWYG control over the page layout. For pure
> production, this is by far the fastest solution I have found to get work
> done.

This is indeed one solution; as for me, my personal "love-hate
relationship with LilyPond" is what makes me *not* give up :)

> Note: swriter gets really unstable when you have a lot of OOoLilyPond
> snippets (I had 2 crashes on two separate documents in one week), or I would
> not have needed to use MS Word. Once you get the OOoLilyPond template
> correctly set up for your project, the swriter user interface is actually
> pretty good. If there was a way to combine the jEdit editor with the
> OOoLilyPond popup window inside swriter, I would be in heaven.

Since Java is already (more or less) integrated in OOo, maybe it would
be possible; however, since these tools are developed by different
people. This is both the magic and the pain of opensource software:
-anything can be done,
-but you're often on your own to do it ...
(I am myself working on a Lily web interface, and I had to learn
regexps and JavaScript!)

I think that LilyPond's only weakness is in its hard learning curve.
It *is* the bunch of (sometimes grumpy, but much helpful) people here,
it *is* discussions like the one we're having, it's all of that which
makes new users learn and hold on, just as I did a few months ago.
This was my first strong involvement in opensource software, and I had
a pretty hard time learning LilyPond, and learning how the community
works (didn't I Graham? ;)


2007/7/12, Graham Percival <address@hidden>:
> > The problem with the LilyPond documentation is that users
> ... don't contribute as much as they should.

This is what the LSR is intended for, so don't hesitate, Paul, to
propose snippets or add useful explanations (see your above "quick
brown fox" example).

Regards,
Valentin