Doc updates from NEWS files

[Cameron Horsburgh]

Howdy folks,

I've been going through the NEWS files to see if there's anything that
still needs documenting. I've come up with a couple of draft lists and
discussed them with Graham Percival, and I now have a list of things we
agree need to go in. We've already documented some but we don't have the
time or the knowledge to do all of them.

There are quite a few things that are cool 'n all but don't belong in
the manual so much as the Tips and Tricks or Regtests.

So far I've looked at NEWS files for releases 2.6 and 2.8--I'll get
through earlier releases tonight.

All of these things have been checked against the current 2.9 web user
manual.

Now we just need someone to do the documenting!

What we need to do.
-------------------

1) Go through this list and see if there's anything you believe you can
document. I've included comments with some that might help. I've also
suggested where I think it belongs in the manual.

2) Email the list to let us know you're planning to work on something.
(And check the list to make sure it hasn't already been covered!)

3) Have a look at the NEWS file (which is included in the documentation
for the specified releases) to see if there's more information.

4) Have a look at the manual and figure out where you think it should go.

5) Write the documentation. If possible, include a working example.

6) Email your suggestion to the list.

Easy! I'm keeping a master list which I'll update and repost as necessary.

Cameron

The List
********

** [2.6] Newly created staves and lyric lines, can be put in any
vertical order, by setting alignBelowContext or alignAboveContext
properties in the newly created context. An example of the use of this
is in input/regression/alignment-order.ly. [It's hard to say if this
needs to be documented--the only place it seems to belong is 4.4./4.5,
but I think it would just confuse matters. ]

** [2.6] Lines, such as glissandi or Text-spanner lines, can have arrows
at the end [Where does this information exist? It needs to be documented
somewhere, but where? A couple of questions on -user lately lead me to
wonder if we need a section about spanners and lines, simply because
there are so many useful tweaks common to all. This is a bit like the
question I had about tuning slurs and ties.]

** [2.6] Grid lines, vertical lines synchronized with notes, can be
drawn across staves, by adding suitable engravers.[This exists in the
regtest, but might be worth mentioning in, for example, 8.5 Educational
Uses.]

**It's now possible to easily create deeply nested system start
delimiters [6.3.7 System start delimiters]

**Support for figured bass has been rewritten. Now it supports
continuation lines, slashed figures, and its figures, brackets, and
alignments may tuned separately. [Not all of these features seem to be
mentioned in 7.7.14 Figured bass]
*** This is partially done, but needs to be looked at by somebody with a
clue.

**The order of words in \markup commands may now be reversed by setting
the text-direction property. This is useful for Right-to-Left languages
like Hebrew. [8.1.6 Overview of text markup commands.]

**The horizontal location of rehearsal marks can be adjusted by setting
the rehearsalMarkAlignSymbol property [8.2.3 Rehearsal marks]
*** Partly done, but may need to be expanded.

**Subproperties, like the details field of Slur and Tie may now be tuned
with \override. [This obviously belongs in Section 9, but I don't
understand it enough to say more!]

**A linebreaking configuration can now be saved as a .ly file
automatically. This allows vertical alignments to be stretched to fit
pages in a second formatting run. See
input/regression/page-layout-twopass.ly for an example. [10.5.4 Vertical
spacing]

**Thicknesses of tie and slurs may be tuned separately for the endings
and the middle part (and) Formatting of ties in chords has been
improved. Ties no longer collide with note heads and stems. In addition,
it is possible to manually specify tie formatting.
*** Add a section to chapter 10 explaining how to tune these things.
thoughts, anyone?

Neither Graham nor I really understand these following items, and we
can't tell if they need to be in the manual or not. Thoughts, anyone?

**Each grob property may also be a “grob closure.” This means that it is
possible to combine functions. [Pardon?]

**Generic music functions may now also be used on articulations and
chord elements, [Again, out of my range. Should this go anywhere?]

**String arguments for music functions may be specified without # marks.
Now, \clef and \bar are also music functions. [?]

**Calculation of extent and offset of grob is now controlled via the
X-extent, Y-extent, X-offset and Y-offset properties, [I suspect this is
documented, but I don't really understand it enough to know what's needed.]

**Each grob property can be a procedure. If this is the case, it is
assumed to be a routine that calculates said property. This is a major
internal cleanup, which also provides advanced tweakability for power
users. [I don't even know what this means...!]