Re: cresc. whitespace padding

[EdBeesley]

David Kastrup wrote
> EdBeesley <

> edplaysdrums@

> > writes:
> 
>> Damnit David, I'm a musician not a programmer! In all seriousness
>> though I always do my best to figure out the answer myself via the
>> documentation.
> 
> Good.  Then you can tell us where the documentation falls short.  To be
> exact, I reacted to your statement:
> 
>> Now when you say this could be easily turned into a
>> music-function... could we assume for a second that I'm totally dumb
>> and have no idea how to do this?
> 
> And my answer to that was: "That's where LilyPond's documentation could
> come in handy..."
> 
> You are in obvious disagreement:
> 
>> I know I've asked a far few questions over the past week but believe
>> me there are a lot that I've not posted because I've spent hours
>> reading through the manual and snippets. I'm very conscious about only
>> using the mailing list as a last resort instead of a short-cut to
>> problems I could solve myself, and I'm sorry if I've not given that
>> impression!
> 
> So let's see where 5 minutes (we are not talking hours here) with the
> manual will take us.
> 
> I first look up "music function" in the Notation Reference's index and
> find
> <URL:http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.16/Documentation/notation/using-music-functions#index-Music-functions>
> 
> Going straight to the second section "substitution function examples"
> (assuming that I am dumb and the first section "Substitution function
> syntax" scares me) from there, the very first example illustrates how to
> wrap a code passage taking numerical values as arguments into a music
> function.
> 
> So obviously you got stuck elsewhere in your attempt to solve that
> problem yourself in the hour between the time the non-parametric
> solution was posted and you asked for getting a solution using a
> function.
> 
> Where?  How can we improve the documentation so that anybody faced with
> the same task, namely wrapping some code with parameters into a music
> function, is not still floored after having been given the right
> keywords?
> 
> Could we assume for a second that I'm totally clueless and have no idea
> how to do this?
> 
> -- 
> David Kastrup


I'm sensing a certain level of hostility here which I don't think is
completely deserved....  I'm assuming from your experience and knowledge
that you are a programmer first and foremost? So for example if you saw the
first solution and then consulted the suggested entries in the manual you'd
immediately spot the connections and be able to figure out how to create
your own function. Whereas I saw the entry in the manual and just thought
'where the hell do I go from here'. I'm sure part of that was tiredness, as
this was after 9 hours of typesetting, but were it not for the example
kindly provided by Thomas I imagine I'd still be no wiser today. 

How to solve this? Ideally make it so I don't have to delve into complex
code to do things like this. But then that depends on what the target market
of Lilypond is... If it's for professional typesetters (e.g. people who use
winScore) then absolutely they should be expected to have intimate knowledge
of the inner workings of Lilypond to enable them work out how to do all the
complex and crazy things they no doubt have to do on a daily basis.

But if you're after your average Sibelius/Finale user who just wants nicer
looking music than those 2 programs can offer but doesn't want to have to
spend hours and hours (and it /has/ taken me hours and hours to get even a
basic understanding of how Lilypond works, and I don't regard my level of
stupidity as particularly above average) on figuring out how to do things
that aren't documented directly yet, (e.g. this whitespace thing I
originally posted about) then I think necessitating this level of knowledge
will switch a lot of people off. 

Speaking personally if it wasn't for the fantastic level of support I've
received from all the generous people on this mailing list then I simply
wouldn't have bothered with Lilypond in the first place, as I don't have the
time to spend working stuff out that someone else can answer in 10 seconds.
I know the point of the manual/tutorials is to enable me to work things out
easily, but, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes you look at things and
without a programmer's mindset it just looks insurmountable. 

Has anyone ever broached the topic of a subscription "help-line" forum or
something like that? If there was a way I could pay a subscription fee and
then get suggested snippets like the above without having to spend time
trying to work it out first I would sign up immediately. This way I wouldn't
have to feel guilty about asking a question and people with superior
knowledge would get more than just a thank you for their time...





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