Re: Programming error - cross fingers

[David Wright]

On Thu 16 Jun 2016 at 04:04:04 (-0400), Andrew Bernard wrote:

[...]
> programming error: Grob direction requested while calculation in progress.
> continuing, cross fingers
> 
> and the second flageolet does not render.
> 
> While I am sure this is informative to some, since there is no position or
> context indicated, I am at a loss to know how to debug my score.
[...]
> Dare I suggest timidly that a line number or rough location or _something_
> would be helpful with this error? As with similar errors before, crossing
> one’s fingers achieves nothing - and may better be omitted from such
> messages, or perhaps rephrased to something less witty (?) such as ‘making
> best effort to continue’ or similar.

While in no way disagreeing that perhaps there might be a way of
soliciting more information to be forthcoming, I would ask you to be
careful with what you wish for. "continuing, cross fingers" is a
valuable tool for restricting search results to LilyPond errors.
Besides, what have you got against wit? It's part of a venerable
tradition in computing, particularly the free side.
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/anthropomorphization.html

Daring to tackle your timid suggestion from a position of ignorance
(about LP, that is, not ignorance of writing software), I assume
you're talking about a line number or position in your .ly source
where the error occurs. It seems likely to me that the programming
error originates from the competing interests of a larger section of
your source than a specific line. In other words, LP is trying to
juggle too many balls; no one ball is specifically to blame.

If you mean a line number or position in the program where the error
originates, well it's possible that "programming error" means that
an assertion failed for some reason and the underlying cause might not
be easy to track down. That's why programmers include assertions: so
that they get told there's a problem rather than just ending up with
a rendering that just looks wrong for no apparent reason. They then
try to debug the program.

So sorry not to be able to help with your flageolets, but please leave
the error's means of expression alone.

Cheers,
David.