Suggestion for documentation: Easy path to datatype reference

[James Harkins]

Along with the existing documentation about overrides and tweaks, it would be 
helpful to have a page -- which is easy to find -- listing all the data types 
and the syntax to write them.

Example: Today, I was trying to write my own \override for the first time. To 
make matters more challenging, I was in a café and their WiFi connection was 
not working. So, the only documentation I had available to me was the *info* 
docs in Emacs. Eventually I found my way to grob-interface and extra-offset: 
"It takes a pair of numbers"... /pair/ of numbers? No obvious entries in the 
index, or looking through the table of contents of the learning manual, 
notation reference for internals reference.

I only needed to move something down, so I gave up and used Y-offset.

I got home, and an Internet search turned up the Scheme tutorial, which does 
explain cons cells, so I finally found the syntax is (a . b). I didn't see it 
in the table of contents because it goes down to second-level sections (1.1, 
1.2 etc.) and the headings about datatypes are 1.1.3 and 1.1.4.

Small issue, I guess -- it's possible to find the information with the help of 
tools outside the documentation, but it is a bit of a usability issue: the 
learning manual discusses tweaks, but appears not to be specific about the 
syntax you will need to specify certain datatypes -- requiring external tools 
and an internet connection to make the documentation useful.

Or maybe it just irritated me and I want to complain :)

FWIW, I'm throwing some quite complex multi-voice notation at Lilypond and most 
of it is coming out beautifully, without manual intervention. So let me balance 
the complaint with kudos for the excellent work of the developer team!

James


--
James Harkins /// dewdrop world
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http://www.dewdrop-world.net

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