Re: Feedback wanted: syntax highlighting in the LilyPond documentation

[David Kastrup]

Jean Abou Samra <jean@abou-samra.fr> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> There is an ongoing proposal to add syntax highlighting
> in LilyPond's documentation. Since it is a notable change
> to the documentation reading experience, user feedback would
> be appreciated. You can browse a syntax-highlighted version
> of the notation manual here:
>
> http://abou-samra.fr/highlighting-demo/notation/index.html
>
> For comparison, this is the current notation manual:
>
> https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.23/Documentation/notation/index.html
>
> The main questions are: what do you think of the principle?
> And is the color scheme good enough?

I just followed the discussion without much attention because I did not
think that it would affect me whether or not there was syntax
highlighting.  That probably was a mistake.  Taking a random example:

There is a wild mixture of colors and font styles without apparent rhyme
or reason.  I don't see that it helps legibility or conveys any useful
categories.  I cannot even figure out what it thinks it is doing.

\layout, \context, \remove are reserved words in the syntax and are
printed in boldface and black.  So is \override which is printed in
normalface blue, like \relative and \repeat.  But \relative is a music
function while \repeat is a reserved word.  Beam.breakable is printed in
red while unfold is printed in blue.

There is apparently a large collection of colors and some font styles
but the application appears rather haphazard, being neither
systematically related to the actual category of the tokens nor to their
function in user input.

There does not appear to be a coherent payback for the inherent lowering
of readability (and printability) from the lower contrast of colored
passages.

What is the information you want to convey better?

-- 
David Kastrup