Re: suggestion for emproving NR: fingering istructions

[Mark Polesky]

Federico Bruni wrote:
> from my privileged position of newbie ;-)
> I have a suggestion for a very tiny edit in the Notation
> Reference which might ease the understanding for new users.
>
> This is the page (section Selected Snippets):
> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond/Inside-the-staff#Fingering-instructions
>
> What is missing there, IMHO, is a clear statement like
> "left-hand fingerings must be entered within a chord construct
> <> (i.e.: even single notes must be enclosed by < >)".
>
> There is a similar sentence in the right-hand fingering chapter:
> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.12/Documentation/user/lilypond/Common-notation-for-fretted-strings#Right_002dhand-fingerings
>
> So why don't you add in the left-hand as well?
>
> I've lost hours trying to figure out why left orientation worked
> just for chords and not for single notes.
> That sentence would have saved me a lot of time and frustration.

Sorry to hear about your frustrations -- I totally understand! And
thanks (very much) for alerting us to a potential source of
confusion. Remember that LilyPond is still a work-in-progress, and
everyone can help! We usually try to clarify sources of confusion
pretty quickly, so these reports are useful. However, it's better
to offer suggestions like this to the developers' mailing list at
address@hidden
archive - http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/
subscribe - http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel

I guess the best place to add this would be in the snippet called
"Controlling the placement of chord fingerings" in the "Fingering
instructions" section. Probably the title should be changed to
"Controlling the placement of fingerings", because apparently the
placement of single-note fingerings is also dependent on the <...>
construct. The snippet *does* provide examples of single notes
enclosed in <...>, but I admit it would be easy for a novice to
overlook the significance of this.

Valentin, would it be as simple as updating the LSR? I thought I
might have read that the current way of generating snippets in
the documentation is under consideration, and may be changing
soon? Anyway, if it's as simple as updating the LSR, you can use
the update included below.

Thanks.
- Mark

***************************************************
Title
***************************************************

Controlling the placement of fingerings


****************************************************
A description of the problem and its solution:
****************************************************

The placement of fingering numbers can be controlled precisely.

Note that this requires fingerings to be entered within a chord
construct <>, even when applied to a single note.


****************************************************
The Lilypond source code snippet (it must compile!): 
****************************************************

<same as before>