Re: Making TextLength ignore some notes.

[David Kastrup]

David Sumbler <address@hidden> writes:

> I must apologise to the list members for wasting their time by asking
> my latest question (below).  I can only put it down to a "senior
> moment", which is quite worrying, as such incidents do seem to be
> getting more frequent.  Or perhaps it is a side-effect of the low-dose
> Amitriptylene I am taking for back-related leg pain.
>
> When I came across the spacing problem I asked about, I was editing the
> layout of a 25-page score that I originally entered into Lilypond only
> 3 weeks ago.  I had a vague notion that I had once asked about a
> similar problem on the list, and I spent some considerable time
> searching the list archives but without finding anything relevant.  I
> also, of course, searched the snippets, also without finding anything
> helpful.  Hence I decided to ask the list members if they knew of a
> solution.
>
> This morning I woke up earlier than usual, and found that I knew the
> answer and why I had the feeling that I had visited this problem once
> before.  The solution is, apparently, one that I had worked out for
> myself.  The embarrassing thing to admit is that it was at the very
> point in the music that caused me a problem when adjusting the layout.
>  In other words, it was only about 3 weeks ago that I solved the
> problem for myself in relation to the very bar that caused me to post
> yesterday.

So now the other list members got to see a summarized solution.

Looks like a whole lot less time waste than average on the user and/or
bug list where we frequently go through the pattern of "but something on
the Internet says different", partially including genuine documentation
pertaining to different version, countered by pointing to prominent
parts of the pertinent manual, followed by "then your search engine
optimization strategies suck, it's all your fault, and you should be
ashamed" for some fuzzy value of "you" apparently not including the
original poster himself.

And of course, after this has repeated a few hundred times, newcomers
complain about the list being unwelcoming because of a marked lack of
enthusiasm.  A good degree of my work is invested in squashing questions
before they arise which I tend to be more graceful at than answering
them.  Documentation work is essential but only somewhat effective since
many questions are often already answered in some reasonably useful
manner in the documentation and of course it is additionally frustrating
for the documentation writer to see that work go unnoticed.  Making
LilyPond simpler to work with, if it can be achieved, usually offers
better payoff, but a lot more people are well qualified to improving the
documentation or, short of that, answering questions in a reasonably
nice manner on the list.

What I wanted to say: you're good.  Like, really good.  Answer one of
the more obvious questions, and you're probably offsetting five
questions of yours with regard to causing fatigue to others.

-- 
David Kastrup