Re: [GLISS] turning strings to symbols

[David Kastrup]

David Nalesnik <address@hidden> writes:

> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 1:27 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Though I don't particularly mind writing cryptic symbols like #'xxx
> anymore (by now they're my old friends), I'm pretty sure I did as I
> was struggling to learn the program.  Eliminating the need for these
> (at least partially) will definitely help attract new users to the
> program.  Of course, there will still be plenty of head-scratching
> among beginners at needing the hash (not to mention that inscrutable
> apostrophe) before the value in overrides.  But that, I imagine, can't
> be helped.

Some values have LilyPond-native representations and so can get along
without #.  At any rate, the value often has a meaningful Scheme
expression following #, whereas in #'symbolname the #' is essentially
line noise, with symbolname carrying the whole information relevant to
the user.

For grob properties, we have type checking information available.  In
theory it should be possible to use this for type coercion like it is
done for function arguments.  But that should not really be part of this
patch series as well.

>>And of course also to give \override-like
>> music functions the option to get input like Staff.TimeSignature
>> delivered as #'(Staff TimeSignature) automagically.
>
> This is wonderful.  Thank you so much for doing this!

The changes in ly/music-functions-init.ly should show some applications
of that.

> My inattention is only because this comes at a very busy time in the
> teaching year for me.  But I would like to tell you that I approve
> very much of these changes.

That's encouraging.  Thanks.

-- 
David Kastrup