Re: Paper size

[Graham Percival]

On 25-Feb-06, at 3:01 PM, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:

> Graham Percival wrote:
> > In fact, why not simply have
> > \paper {
> >   paper-size = "a4"
> > }
> > I have nothing against scheme expressions, but I don't see why the 
> > paper size (and global staff size) need scheme.  If we could define 
> > them like normal \paper or \layout variables, we could avoid some 
> > newbie confusion.
>
> because setting paper-size implies setting line-width and a number of 
> other variables. Check out the definition of set-paper-size for 
> details.

Yes, it does a bunch of stuff "under the hood", but a user need not be 
concerned with it.  I'm just wondering if we could do

// pseudocode
if ( (\paper-option)==(paper-size $1 $2) ) then
  #(set-default-paper-size $1 $2)


I freely admit my lack of experience in programming, but I can't 
imagine how some syntactic sugar like this would change anything 
substantive in the way that lily works internally.

If we could add two such rules -- paper-size and staff-size -- then we 
could avoid #(...) constructs entirely for simple scores.  (mostly the 
default-paper-size... I wish that everybody used A4 paper, but it's 
hard to find in North America.  And if you want to print at university, 
you're stuck with usletter.  :(

I have absolutely no objection to requiring explicit scheme expressions 
for other stuff, but IMO these two items are pretty basic.

Cheers,
- Graham