Re: preliminary GLISS discussions

[Graham Percival]

On Sat, Sep 01, 2012 at 12:07:07PM -0300, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> This is also the danger of having broad discussions over syntax.
...
> on the basis of how "intuitive" it looks. See also
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_Law_of_Triviality

Yes, that was the whole reason why I wanted to reserve this list
for discussions about serious proposals, and let the majority of
the bike-shedding happen off-list during the process of creating
serious, well-researched proposals.

> For an illustrative example
> of what can go wrong with lots of well-intentioned decisions are
> stacked together, have a look at the following video:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yZHbh396rc

Yes, that video is hillarious.

> In the end, each syntax is a compromise between what you allow for
> expressivity, and how much you disallow to stop the user from shooting
> himself in the foot. If you decide to "reinvent" the syntax, you are
> only moving about the compromise, closing off one nest of rats in
> exchange for opening a can of worms.

I agree with that.  The question is, what happens next?  I see
three options, but perhaps you see a different "obvious" proposal.

1. declare the 2.16.0 syntax absolutely frozen (possibly with the
exception of property names and scheme).  Reject absolutely all
patches to lily/parser.yy

2. have a serious and respectful discussion on lilypond-devel
about these compromises and whether we think it is appropriate to
select a different compromise for some portion(s) of the syntax
given what we've seen from the past 15 years of LilyPond.

3. have a serious and respectful discussion on a different list,
and when those discussions reach a firm proposal, bring that
proposal to lilypond-devel for a serious and respectful discussion
about the well-researched proposal.


So far I don't feel that the discussion has been very fruitful.

- Graham