Re: Cut and paste from manual returns errors

[David Kastrup]

Urs Liska <address@hidden> writes:

> Am 23.06.2013 15:59, schrieb DW:
>> Ah, thanks. I was using the latest stable version which is 12.16.2, updating
>> to the unstable version did the trick.
> It is a really common source of problems that people use examples from
> manuals not matching their LilyPond version ...

Well, it is due to LilyPond moving forward at a nice pace.  While there
is quite a strive to keep backwards compatibility, not every hack is
going to work the same in future.  Not even every previously well-formed
program (though convert-ly usually should be able to deal with most
backward-incompatible changes).  Most of the problems we see are with
people mixing up versions of manuals and programs of current stable or
unstable, or of last stable and current stable.

When I was active on AUCTeX, there were sometimes bug reports about
non-working instructions from former student pages that worked more by
accident than by design even about 10 years ago.

And there is a propensity of people who never actually read the manuals
coming with their software because they consider provided documentation
defective by default, and instead only consult pages they find by web
searches.

Actually, I remember my mother having problems with looking at some URL
somebody sent her because Google did not return something useful when
searching for that URL.  She was not aware that her browser did not just
have a Google search box but an actual URL entry field.

Things like that make one wonder whether search engine advertising
revenue is not merely absurdly overhyped.

-- 
David Kastrup