Re: For future 2.14 doc discussion -- increasingly realistic musical examples

[Valentin Villenave]

2007/8/29, Trevor Bača <address@hidden>:
> Hi,

Hi Trevor,

quite a long mail (very interesting though).
You're right, musical examples are extremely important. Besides, I
noticed we're using less musical examples than several years ago (I
remember, in 1.x manuals, a Brahms example, and the Sammartini thing
among others, all gone now).

So, while I get your point, I don't know if the whole manual can (or
has to) be affected by your suggestion.

-A few days ago, I asked here about the "feature page" which was
planned years ago and hasn't been realized yet; I guess this would be
the perfect location for high-quality cultural score samples.

-Finding *genuine* relevant examples isn't just difficult: it is
nearly impossible. Just have a look at this page (2.10 doc):
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.10/Documentation/user/lilypond/Automatic-accidentals#Automatic-accidentals
and then the same page, for which I recently wrote a specific example:
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.11/Documentation/user/lilypond/Automatic-accidentals#Automatic-accidentals
...you'll see that I had a pretty hard time ;)

-However, real scores would be very great in the manual. For instance,
the tutorial is great, but maybe something similar could be done in a
"writing a Schubert Lied in 10 steps"-way. Users who read the manual
could be "granted", for example at the end of each chapter, with a
score sample demonstrating some of the features they've just learned.
The page 
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.11/Documentation/user/lilypond/Bagpipe-example#Bagpipe-example
is a perfect example ; I wish there were more pages like this one in
the manual.

-the http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.11/examples page could help us, for
instance, but also the Mutopia project (there should be more links to
them, to start with the Examples page, shouldn't it?).

-Finally, to illustrate what you said, I just wanted to mention what
made me learn and use LilyPond: just one single image: the famous
"screech and boink"
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.11/Documentation/user/lilypond/lily-f7fa3db6b9
My first LilyPond version was 1.7, and back then I had never seen any
program (I used Finale, Encore, and later, Sibelius)  which could
handle complex rhythms and polyphony in such a spectacular way: I
jjust *had* to give it a try!

I guess after all, we're just like kids: it's all about nice images :)

Regards,
Valentin