Re: Making TextLength ignore some notes.

[David Sumbler]

Thank you for your generous reply.

I am surprised that you think that newcomers (or anybody else) find the
list unwelcoming.  I have always been amazed by the willingness of a
few list members to provide detailed replies, and have rarely read
anything that appeared to be unwelcoming.

I take your point that I myself am probably capable of answering some
of the simpler queries; this is something I have very occasionally done
and shall endeavour to do perhaps more frequently in the future.  But
as I receive digests rather than individual posts to the list, it is
often the case that the alacrity of other members has meant that the
question is answered even before I see it.  I did once try changing my
list settings to receive each separate post, but found it unmanageable:
even with the digest, there are often quite a number of emails in one
day: last Thursday there were 15 digests containing 67 separate
messages, though I admit that that was exceptional.

So once again, thanks again for your kind remarks; and thanks to you
and all the other list members who rarely, if ever, resort to RTFM, and
who never tell anybody to stop asking stupid questions - even in this
case, where my question really was pretty stupid!

David


On Sun, 2018-04-29 at 10:53 +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> 
> 
> 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.