Re: A usability anecdote

[Colin Campbell]

On 11-12-14 04:51 AM, David Kastrup wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just took the material from
> <URL:http://nicolas.sceaux.free.fr/prelude/prelude.html>  and took a look
> of how the current developer version may help in making things nicer to
> a user.  There is a lot in there (and I think it will make an appearance
> in the next LilyPond report) but one thing that happened is that
>
>    \midi { \tempo 4 = 80 }
>
> made Lilypond complain.  convert-ly was able to fix this and produced:
>
>    \midi {
>      \context {
>        \Score
>        tempoWholesPerMinute = #(ly:make-moment 80 4)
>        }
>      }
>
> That is not particularly pretty, so I tried something else, and lo and
> behold:
>
>    \midi {
>      \context {
>        \Score
>        \with \settingsFrom { \tempo 4 = 80 }
>        }
>      }
>
> actually works fine.  Considering that \settingsFrom was actually done
> to close an issue concerning accident styles, I consider this payoff in
> a completely unrelated area a nice side effect.  Not as easy as the
> simplistic version that worked with Lilypond 2.5, but it does not
> require the user to call Scheme, does not require knowing about
> tempoWholesPerMinute, and one can easily guess what it does by looking
> at it.


If you care to send me a few words, I could add this to the docs, David.

Cheers,
Colin

--
I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both 
hands.
You need to be able to throw something back.
-Maya Angelou, poet (1928- )