Re: IR issues

[David Kastrup]

Urs Liska <address@hidden> writes:

> Am 23.11.2015 um 11:20 schrieb David Kastrup:
>
>> At any rate, you can also play with settings height-limit and ratio.
>
> OK, I've now found out how height-limit and ratio play together.
> Actually ratio is the setting to deal with the behaviour of curves of
> different length.
>
> Interestingly I have to override Slur.height-limit but
> Tie.details.height-limit
>
> But looking for another property of Slurs and Ties leads me to another
> question:
> Is this:
> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/internals/slur
> and
> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/internals/slur_002dinterface
>
> really the reference for how I can change the appearance of slurs and ties?
>
> If that's true I think it's really awful. I know the IR is a *reference*
> and not a tutorial but I'm sure that *noone* will be able to look up the
> information for tweaks they need anything near efficiently. The majority
> of properties is described in a completely inaccessible manner.

The IR is a programmers' reference.  For power users, it's more like a
last resort.  Of course that does not mean that incomprehensible
documentation strings are a feature rather than a problem, but it does
mean that
a) the organization of properties in a user-friendly way is not a
priority: end users should rather get stuff like \shape to work with, or
style files (which we don't really have).
b) reworking this into a consistently friendly resource where each
property description is reasonably understandable on its own is a large
chunk of work.  Some fly-by fixes will not suffice for making a dent in
the overall character of the IR.

-- 
David Kastrup