Re: How do new users feel about LilyPond's documentation?

[tisimst]

Larry,

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 1:43 PM, Larry Kent-2 [via Lilypond] <[hidden email]> wrote:

My problem is that too much of it is written like the following response from Elaine, which looks like Pprogrammers Only Need Apply. 

I get frustrated when I'm looking for something to answer the question "How do I ..."

This is exactly why I posed the questions. I keep feeling like it would be super helpful to have a section (in or out of the official docs) that uses verbiage like this. Not sure what that would look like and what the restrictions would be for choosing to put content there or not. Either way, having something that is sooooo obvious (with as few clicks as possible) to describe how to do many of the most common tasks seems like a useful thing for new users. Some examples:

"How do I change the input language to English?"

"How do I add a slur?" 

"How do I adjust the page margins?"

"How do I add another voice?"

"How do I change the tempo?"

"How do I add an articulation?"

"How do I add an instrument?"

"How do I change the size of a staff?"

"How do I group instruments together?"

"How do I import a MusicXML file?"

"How do I change the angle of a beam?"

"How do I create a tuplet?"

"How do I add the closing barline?"

etc.

I think the questions need to be oriented to the language that GUI users are used to using (like "How do I add an instrument?", even though LilyPond doesn't deal with instruments in the same way as the GUI programs). This should provide a good transition to understanding more how LilyPond thinks about (and expects) the input syntax.

Just thinking out loud...

- Abraham

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