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

[Simon Albrecht]

Am 22.04.2015 um 23:19 schrieb Carl Sorensen:
> On 4/22/15 1:30 PM, "Martin Tarenskeen" <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > Stiil, I will try to give a sketch what happens to me again and again:
> >
> > I want to learn about how to change defaults and how to tweak default
> > output so I open the Notation Reference:
> >
> > Notation Refence -> 5. Changing Defaults
> > " A tutorial introduction to accessing and modifying these properties can
> > be found in the Learning Manual, see Tweaking output. This should be read
> > first " -->
> I think this appropriate for a reference manual.  It should point you to a
> tutorial, if you need the tutorial.
>
> > Learning Manual -> 4. Tweaking Output -> 4.1 Tweaking Basics
> > ->4.1.1 Introduction to tweaks
> >
> > "Before starting on this Chapter you may wish to review the section
> > Contexts and engravers, as Contexts, Engravers, and the Properties
> > contained within them are fundamental to understanding and constructing
> > Tweaks." -->
> This is a potentially bigger problem, because the Learning Manual is not
> intended to be a reference manual.  But it *is* intended to be read
> sequentially.
I think this is an important point: the manual need to be used the way 
they should. Often, problems arise because people just start trying lily 
out (as they use to start working with a WYSIWYG tool, probably) and 
don’t first get acquainted with the fundamentals – laid out pretty well 
in the LM.
Perhaps it boils down to this: Using a conventional typesetting software 
may be learned through trial and error, using lilypond can’t. You have 
to be willing to get a grip of it from the basic, and for me this 
involved to delve into a completely new way of thinking. The reason I 
did that (investing a maybe unreasonable amount of time over years) was 
because I like doing things properly unto perfection, and this is 
probably something I share with many Lilypond users. So everybody who 
likes a more casual, superficial, easy-to-use approach will probably 
always be in need of a powerful front-end (Denemo, perhaps future 
extended Frescobaldi, stylesheets, code templates etc.), or prefer to 
stay with Finale or Sibelius (or worse, Capella, etc.) default output, 
no matter how ugly it be.
But developing those front-ends should be somewhat separate from actual 
Lilypond core development, shouldn’t it?
And oops, this post landed inbetween the two large threads currently 
going on… :-)

Yours, Simon