Re: RFC

[Baron Schwartz]

Hello all.

This may be off-topic, I'm not sure.  I've used LilyPond a bit and it
engraves music very nicely, however, I have one fundamental difference of
philosophy that might fit into this discussion: the language for the files
is procedural, not declarative.  This comes up because someone mentioned
the constantly-changing syntax -- a serious barrier to wider adoption, no
doubt!  I believe the syntax changes are because the language is
procedural; they reflect the changes to LilyPond's internal workings,
which I see as a bad thing -- it would be better if the user (and the
input file) could be insulated from that.

My bias is toward declarative because it encodes information, not
instructions.  I wrote my thesis on the topic of transforming one format
into another -- loosely taken, this means "music information retrieval."  
To be most useful, I believe music files ought to simply state *what* is
there, and let the engraver decide *how* to engrave it.  I know this is an
over-simplification, but for the sake of brevity I'll leave it at that.

That said, how about the list of to-do things includes "write translators
from other formats to LilyPond?"  There are vast bodies of work in other
formats.  Translation probably wouldn't be perfect, but it might be good
enough to save a lot of work.

Thanks
Baron

-- 
Everyone who believes in telekinesis, raise my hand!