Re: cresc. whitespace padding

[EdBeesley]

"I don't think it was intended.  The problem is that the documentation for 
Lilypond is generally excellent and occasionally useless.  Regular 
contributors get a little tired of users who can't be bothered to read the 
bits that are excellent, and instead ask here (often repeatedly asking 
questions that are trivially solved with a quick R of TFM).  David was at 
pains to request suggestions on how to improve an aspect of the 
documentation that you have found useless for your purposes. "

I can totally understand that, but believe me I always do my best to read
through and try to understand the documentation. I will admit though maybe I
didn't try hard enough last night after so much time spent staring at a
screen!


"> 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? 

You mean, as opposed to a human being? "

Sorry, I put the trailing dots in completely the wrong place. I meant the
latter sentence to run into the subsequent one, i.e. you're first and
foremost a programmer therefore you spot connections in the manual that non
programmers might not. I was not meaning to question your credentials as a
human being at any point :)

"You _totally_ evade the question about how the manual entry (or its 
navigation) could have been improved to actually make you not require 
additional help.  Instead you insist that "programmers" or whoever else 
should feel responsible for manually solving your problems. 

So how about pointing out _particular_ problems?  A rant is very nice 
and all, but it does not help us improve our documentation. "

Again, sorry, I went off on a bit of a tangent. Although I think here the
internet as a medium for communication is letting us down somewhat; I can
assure you I wasn't intending to rant! 

Trying to answer the question in hindsight is a little tricky, as now I've
got the example from Thomas and compared it to the documentation examples
(http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.16/Documentation/notation/substitution-function-examples)
I almost understand it. 

I think my main problem last night was that I couldn't figure out how to
turn the x-ext and y-ext into variables that could be passed to the
function. But looking at it now it almost seems obvious. Perhaps if you
could include an example using more complex scheme code like the one Thomas
used for this post and show how the fixed values can be replaced by
variables that get passed to the function? That would definitely have helped
my first reading of it, I think. 

"> 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. 

Didn't playing an instrument require you to work stuff out that someone 
else could play just right away?  "

If we're using that instrumental simile, then the majority of things a pupil
learns he could figure out by himself eventually (a GROSS oversimplification
of teaching but let it slide for now!). However, a teacher gives the correct
way of doing things first time, and through subsequent practice the pupil
then understands the reasons why they are doing things that way, and have
saved a lot of time in the process. Also, a teacher gets paid for providing
these short cuts (which is what I was proposing). 

"And do you really think that Thomas 
Morley invested a mere 10 seconds for each of his very elaborate answers 
to you? "

I think your literalness and my exaggeration are hindering each other, I was
meaning that relatively speaking it took him far far less time to provide
the answer than it would have done for me to provide it myself.

"You'll find that things are even more counterintuitive in that regard 
than LilyPond's documentation.  At the current point of time, Thomas 
Morley is likely the single most helpful "help-line" person around.  Now 
you would imagine that this would most likely lead to people paying him 
small amounts of money as appreciation. "

I would happily send Thomas some money as thanks for his advice! I would
much rather have a structured way of doing this, e.g. I post a topic like
this, Thomas says "easy, give me 5 bucks I'll tell you how to do it" and I
send him 5 bucks. I know this is kind of implemented with the bounty system
but I get the impression that's for more serious additions to the code. 

"
Now you are basically saying that Thomas _wastes_ his money, at least 
regarding the part where it goes to letting me work on making the manual 
more human-understandable, because you consider the manual useless: you 
explicitly state that you will not look anything up that anybody else 
can solve for you in a reasonably short amount of time, and it's very 
hard for a manual to compete with _that_. "

That's a little extreme, I don't consider the manual useless. I found it
indispensable to get started with Lilypond, and it was easy to understand
and well written. But as I'm sure you'll appreciate, with growing complexity
in the things you try and accomplish, a much higher level of understanding
is required. My point was that I'd rather pay someone who's already taken
the time to reach this level so I don't have to spend the same amount of
time reaching it myself. And there are _plenty_ of things that I _have_
spent time digging in the manual for, for which I could have received an
answer on here within 5 minutes, but I took the time to dig in the manual
and read through previous posts to figure it out myself. I think your
characterisation of me as the prototypical luser (yes I read BofH, my dad's
in software!) who makes no effort to RTFM is a little unfair....



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