Re: [GLISS] - alternative viewpoint

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

David Kastrup writes:

>> Is there any
>> possibility to fine-tune this as requested by Phil, in particular,
>> emitting the right usage as an example in the error message?
>
> You mean, currently we basically see the default error message from the
> parser generator.  Improving this involves basically accepting errors in
> input and acting on them by putting out hand-tailored messages.

Hopefully stating the obvious...to me, please be careful to keep
mentioning the actual error condition.

It can be very helpful to add error states and hand-tailor messages, and
even a usage example or suggestion may be helpful... if the suggestion
has a very high guestimate of being right.

Some softwares replace the actual error condition -- with whatever good
intention -- by a user friendly message that guessed wrong.  Ugh.

Also, more and more google is your friend with error messages, even or
especially if they're cryptic.  Hmm, people may not know that.  What if
upon error, after the error message, LilyPond prints google's first hit:
and by the way, this is what Google thinks about your problem. ;-)

Jan

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org
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