Re: Lilypond structure / implicit - explicit / with statement

[David Sumbler]

On Mon, 2016-04-04 at 16:12 -0400, address@hidden wrote:
> > From: Noeck <address@hidden>
> > To: address@hidden
> > Subject: Re: Lilypond structure / implicit - explicit / with
> > statement
> > Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 22:11:51 +0200
> > 
> > Would the table in the previous mail be helpful for the docs here?
> > http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/notation/overview-of-modifying-properties
> > 
> > I could write it and some text around it if there is a general feeling
> > that it would help.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Joram

I think it would help.

I have followed this thread with great interest: I have a lot of
sympathy with Bernard.

I have been using Lilypond for a few years now (but admittedly there are
always periods of weeks or months at a time when I haven't touched it,
which of course makes things much more difficult to retain).

I still find the whole thing rather cryptic, and I do think that
Bernard's remark about Godolvsky errors is perceptive and relevant.  A
few of the replies that have been given imply that things are pretty
obvious when, for some, they simply are not.  When one is very familiar
with and well-immersed in a subject, it is often hard or impossible to
understand what another intelligent person finds so obscure or difficult
about it.

I myself have even had thoughts lately of cutting my losses, installing
a DOS emulator and going back to using Score!  I can't remember much
about how Score is used, but I do remember that I published quite a
number of arrangements and compositions in the late '90s using Score,
and that getting to grips with it was a fraction of the effort I have
needed (and still need) to understand how to do things in Lilypond.  Yet
Score's output is commonly regarded still as pretty much first-rate.

Of course, different people have different learning styles, and for me I
think that part of the problem with Lilypond is that there is no very
clear, organized "bottom-up" description of how it works and how to use
it.  Like Bernard, I suspect, I would probably have had more success in
getting to grips with Lilypond if I had had a more thorough grounding in
the fundamentals at the very start.  I'm the sort of person who finds
that modern (human)-language-teaching methods leave me stranded very
quickly: I need to learn the present tense of the verb "to be" and the
principles of the orthography of a language at the very beginning.

Just a thought - perhaps one day somebody who understands Lilypond well
might write a section for the docs, starting with the basic
\book {
  \score {
    \new Staff {
      \new Voice {
        \relative {
          c''4 a b c
        }
      }
    }
    \layout { }
  }
}
structure shown in LM3.1.1 (what happened to \bookpart I wonder) and
gradually expanding that, as well as showing how and when some elements
can be omitted.  The different ways of changing context and object
properties could be detailed as well.

David