Re: Not Nice Review of the LilyPond

[David Kastrup]

Thomas Morley <address@hidden> writes:

> Am So., 2. Dez. 2018 um 14:01 Uhr schrieb Sandro Santilli <address@hidden>:
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 02, 2018 at 11:01:36AM +0000, J Martin Rushton wrote:
>>
>> > "LilyPond source files appear to be written in a custom programming
>> > language whose grammar is never discussed."
>> > - I'm afraid this one is bang on target.
>>
>> Hey, I have the exact same feeling. Very obscure way to put chords
>> in parenthesis (I asked yesterday).
>
> I beg to differ.
> It's the consequence of ...

"obscure" and "there is a technical reason for it" are not opposites.  A
number of decisions of LilyPond's input syntax lead themselves better to
extensibility and sometimes logical coherency which makes it easier to
deduce what to do for things, and what things you read may mean.
LilyPond tries aiming for a best compromise in the direction of
"natural", "obvious", "defensible", "logical" but they are not all the
same.  Sometimes one can improve the compromises taken, sometimes this
is hard.  At least LilyPond is a better starting point than MusiXTeX.

-- 
David Kastrup