Re: review new info on file layout

[Mats Bengtsson]

Quoting Erik Sandberg <address@hidden>:
> > > (I think there's a minor pedagogical point in saying \new Lyrics before
> > > \lyricsto, since the \new Lyrics really isn't a relevant argument of
> > > the
> > > music function, and because all other contexts start with context
> > > names)

I would say the opposite, since in all other situations \new is used like
\new Lyrics {...} or \new Lyrics \with {...} {...}. If you insert 
\lyricsto inbetween, people might get the the impression that
\lyricsto is part of the \new Lyrics construct. If you want to exaggerate
the pedagogics, I would even propose to say
\lyricsto mytune { \new Lyrics {...} }
to make it really clear what \lyricsto does (I hope it's legal syntax, 
haven't checked).


> BTW, the following template:
> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.7/Documentation/user/lilypond/Single-staff.html#Single-staff
> does a \context Voice=one{} without explicitly creating the 
> surrounding staff.
> I'd recommend to add a \new Staff, like:
>        <<
>           \new Staff \context Voice = one {
>              \autoBeamOff
>              \melody
>           }
>           \lyricsto "one" \new Lyrics \text
>        >>
>
> Anyway that's what I usually do. It "feels" unsafe to use \context 
> Voice alone
> to create a new staff, it "feels" like that context could end up in an
> already existing staff if more parts are added to the score in a similar way.
> Consider the following, for example:
>        <<
>           \context Voice = one {
>              \autoBeamOff
>              \melody
>           }
>           \context Voice = two {
>              \accomp
>           }
>           \lyricsto "one" \new Lyrics \text
>        >>
>
> I think lily does create separate staves for the voices in this case, 
> but it's
> not at all clear, and adding \new Staff statements explicitly makes the
> semantics clearer.

We have lots of optional constructs in the syntax, { c } is actually a 
short-cut for
\book{\score{\new Staff{\new Voice{ c }}}}
(maybe I missed something). I think this is one major source of confusion
but of course it's also convenient. My personal view is that we should 
make at least some of these parts compulsory again (especially \score), 
since it really only saves a significant portion of key-strokes when 
you write an example file with one or two bars, but not really for any 
real music.

   /Mats