Re: Not Nice Review of the LilyPond

[David Kastrup]

Sandro Santilli <address@hidden> writes:

> On Sun, Dec 02, 2018 at 04:53:58PM +0100, Thomas Morley wrote:
>> 
>> The proposed _ly-syntax_ is
>> \parenthesize <whatever>
>> \parenthesize #'left <whatever>
>> \parenthesize #'right <whatever>
>> No parens.
>
> To be honest I still find that syntax hard to understand.
> Replace the 3 <whatever> with A B and C, how would the
> above code render those chords ?
>
> I'm guessing it would be:
>
>     A ( B C )
>
> But if that's the case, what is the initial \parenthesize for ?
>
> Note I used code found in 
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2016-10/msg00574.html
> which has similar hard-to-understand syntax, I used as such:
>
>         | g2:6 \leftParen bes2:dim5 |
>         a4:m7 \rightParen d2:7
>
> Guess how it is rendered ?
> For obscure reason, the right paren goes _after_
> the d2:7 (which is what I want, but looks weird
> in the source code).

\rightParen is a function taking arguments.  Function arguments go after
a function.

> Please note: I love the lilypond and even more the _community_ around
> it, so don't take my observations as destructive as they really don't
> want to be :)

There is a difference between superficial aesthetics of input and
inherent logic.  LilyPond's input language tries catering quite a bit
for the former but ultimately is disciplined by the latter.  There is a
difference between "I can see the music" and "I can see what happens
here".  And "I can see what happens here" and "I am in control of what
happens here" and "I can change what happens here" are related and
ultimately make the program more powerful in the hand of experienced
users as well as in the hand of users aided by experienced users.

Some of the sacrifices in the superficial aesthetics are what actually
enables the community around LilyPond (that you love) to actively engage
with your problems, without the need for compiling custom versions of
LilyPond which are in more than one way a dead end and a lot of effort.

In those kinds of overall tradeoffs, I do think that LilyPond is not
doing bad generally.

-- 
David Kastrup