Re: Second staff beginning with an acciaccatura defeats "\override Staff.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f" in the first staff

[Štěpán Němec]

On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 10:56:17AM +0100, Colin Hall wrote:
> Thanks for the bug report, Štěpán. I must confess we have many similar
> reports from users. In many cases I believe they have just had their
> first experience of typesetting something with Lilypond that starts
> with a grace note.
> 
> I've addded a comment to issue 34 referencing this thread and
> including Reinhold's workaround.

Thank you.
 
> https://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=34
> 
> About the docs, can you say where you looked and failed to find the
> correct guidance? It might help with preparation of a documentation
> enhancement.
> 
> To check I went to the section on grace notes:
> 
> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.15/Documentation/notation/special-rhythmic-concerns#grace-notes
> 
> Under "Known issues and warnings" there is an example of using skip
> notes in the voice without the grace note. In that example it is clear
> in the bad output that something is missing and one might easily think
> of inserting a grace in the other voice, and then turn that into a
> skip.
> 
> For the case where the music starts with a grace note the source of
> the problem is much less obvious for an inexperienced user.

Your diagnosis is quite correct -- I have very little experience with
Lilypond, so the problem was far from obvious to me. I saw a problem
with time signature, so that's what I searched for. In the docs I saw
examples where the override expression worked and had no idea why it
didn't in my case. Then I just gradually stripped my score into the
minimal example that showed that the real problem had something to do
with the grace note.

_Then_ (i.e., after managing to find the real cause myself) reading the
Grace notes issues and warnings section would help, indeed, but I don't
know how likely it is to end up in that section right away when seeing a
problem with time signatures.

So to me it seems that having a standalone top level "Known issues and
warnings" section possibly just accumulating all similar problem
sections in the documentation and linking to the bug tracker where
relevant (such as here) would save a lot of head scratching or outright
frustration for people like me. One would just have to skim through that
instead of the whole reference when one sees some (very) strange
behaviour.

-- 
Štěpán Němec