Of snippets and petals

[Basil Crow]

I like LilyPond. Even though I'm far from proficient at it, I know a 
good thing when I see it -- and LilyPond is definitely a Good Thing when 
it comes to music notation software. I'm a Windows user who's mucked 
around with Linux and web development/coding who has been using Finale 
for the past five years. In learning LilyPond, the one hardest thing for 
me has been the syntax.

For me, learning the syntax and constructs of LilyPond's language has 
been difficult. The documentation is clear in a very "dictionary 
reference" type of way, but larger questions linger for me. What 
"context" am I in? Where do I put such-and-such a snippet of code so 
that it's in the right place and "works"? Through experience I've taught 
myself how to "read" PHP code, but LilyPond format is even more complex 
for me. I do intend to put the time in, but the initial frustration when 
trying to cobble together a few files can be immensely frustrating for 
someone coming in from a GUI world.

I primarily learn through examples. I "picked up" PHP that way, and I've 
learned enough about Ruby to be able to set up a Rails application with 
FastCGI, but I'm really not an expert in these things. I find examples, 
adapt them for my use, and gradually pick it up from there. It seems to 
me that these types of examples are missing from the LilyPond community.

I'm not suggesting that the official documentation needs any big 
changes: it is very thorough and great. But an easy way for people to 
share little things that work in a more open exchange would go a long 
way. Take a look at http://www.textsnippets.com/ from the TextDrive 
hosting company. It is a place where anyone can post and tag "snippets" 
of information and add comments to it. This has been the difference 
between me getting something done and not getting it done in many cases. 
The ability for newbies to write up what works relatively easily will 
help others who have the same problem and avoid the barrier of spending 
a lot of time reading documentation to properly understand the way 
everything completely works.

The other day, I wrote to lilypond-user: "Dumb question: How do you use 
an open parenthesis in lyrics? I'm using '\lyricmode {' to begin my 
lyrics." Now, had I read the documentation on entering lyrics, I might 
have discovered that "Quoted words can also be used in Lyrics mode to 
specify words that cannot be written with the above rules," but that 
wasn't immediately obvious. Mats Bengtsson quite kindly answered my 
question.

I realized that I needed a way to keep track of these small things for 
myself, so I set up http://lilypetals.basilcrow.com/ -- a snippets 
system using the same code that powers TextSnippets (I called my 
Snippets install "LilyPetals" just for fun). But the primary purpose of 
a thing like Snippets is to help other people who need to do something 
and need to find that same "snippet." I'd love it if LilyPond were to 
have a similar official "snippets" site that users could be encouraged 
to post to. Although I just have saved one to my own Snippets install, 
sites like TextSnippets have grown to 50 snippets in a few days (and 
become immensely helpful). What do the developers think of something 
like this?

Thanks,
Basil