Re: still lyrics

[Werner LEMBERG]

> But seriously. There are so many aspects for which Lily doesn't
> produce perfect music notation, that calling that a "bug" would give
> the impression that almost every part of lilypond is thoroughly
> buggy, and will be for next 5 or 10 years. IMO this is not
> justified.

Indeed, this isn't justified.  You guys have done a good job, and the
typographical appearance is quite pleasing.

> That's why have a distinction between:
> 
>   1. Bug: the program doesn't work as advertised (documented). Fixing
>      this involves some (usually small) mods to the existing code.
> 
>   2. Shortcoming: the program doesn't do something according to
>      notation rules, but we never claimed it would. Fixing this
>      involves (re)writing complete chunks of code, and is much more
>      difficult than 1.

For example, I consider an accidental which is too far placed to the
left as 2. -- even the horizontal order of accidentals fits into this
category IMHO --, but extending a melismata line over a rest *is* a
bug for me since it clearly violates typographical rules.  So I would
rephrase rule 2 as

  2. Shortcoming: The program doesn't do something as beautiful as
     typographical rules would ask for, but we never claimed it would.

> I think that the beam code is almost bugfree in your sense of the
> word.  I can't think of any other part of the formatting engine that
> matches your definition of bugfree.

I see it the other way round: Even if beams are not optically
pleasant, they are bug free in the sense of 1. as soon as they
properly connect stems.

> Unfortunately, keeping/making lily bugfree in the sense of 1. is
> already taking a lot of effort. If you want 2., then you will have
> to have a lot of patience, or we need serious increase in
> knowledgeable hackers/free time to hack.

I try to help here, but neither C++ nor Scheme is my favourite
language, thus I will continue with proposals, algorithms etc.,
reporting any peculiarity which you hopefully save for the future in
case it can't be fixed right now.


    Werner