Re: [GLISS] - alternative viewpoint

[David Kastrup]

David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:

> Quite agreed.  That is what I call "extending the vocabulary", and
> making that feasible continues to be a main objective of my work on
> music functions.  We got a few new people on the user list contributing
> music functions so far, but those contributions are not convenience
> wrappers but actually do complex jobs.
>
> There are several lashback issues connected with convenience wrappers,
> and they focus around the question:
>
>     To what degree does a convenience wrapper become part of LilyPond's
>     language?
>
> There are several questions following from that starting point.
>
>     a) reflection.  Should \displayLilyMusic recognize expressions that
>     can be produced by a wrapper and output them?  If we answer "yes" to
>     that question, it would make sense to provide some infrastructure
>     for specifying appropriate reverse engineering rules to LilyPond in
>     a manner that is not significantly more complex to specify than the
>     wrapper itself.
>
>     b) When and how are third-party tools supposed to learn about such
>     wrappers when they are supposed to be part of LilyPond?
>
>     c) MusicXML?

Oh, and d) bikeshedding.

For a semi-example, see
<URL:http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=2717> and
particularly the discussion on its Rietveld review
<URL:http://codereview.appspot.com/6443087>.

Now one might argue that this currently is rather a discussion on
meta-bikeshedding, namely getting something right that will serve as a
template for future bikeshedding, but it is quite clear that with
convenience wrappers, everybody actually _can_ contribute his opinion
without requiring much expertise.  And it makes some sense as well since
we are, after all, trying to hit the sweet spot of naive expectations.

Meta-bikeshedding makes some sense for prestructuring this space, but
after that, filling in the blanks is pretty much possible for everyone.
In some respects, this may be part of "personal style collections", but
of course some stuff makes sense to be part of the core as well.

-- 
David Kastrup