Re: Tangled up in Lilypond syntax

[David Kastrup]

Aaron Hill <address@hidden> writes:

> On 2019-03-27 4:19 pm, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
>> That’s great… But essentially all of the documentation has \relative
>> at the top-level. So what is a newbie to think, other than "My code
>> should look like
>>
>> \paper { … }
>>
>> \header {…}
>>
>> \relative c' { … }
>>
>> But then they start to cut and paste code bits, or switch the order of
>> voices, or any of a dozen other natural and intuitive operations that
>> don’t imply ‘I’m destructive!!’… and then wonder why their music goes
>> off the deep end.
>
> Truly it is not "destructive", to be fair.  It at best is "chaotic",
> where there is a perfectly deterministic behavior behind the scenes
> that simply is not obvious at first glance.
>
> And, that's a fault of the documentation but also the end user.  As
> with most things with computers, it is ultimately the responsibility*
> of the user to be willing to understand how a system works.

An electrician cannot state "end user responsibility" when he leaves
blank wires sticking out of sockets.  It's the job of the documentation
and templates to teach useful patterns at a time before the user
understands what the patterns' details are about.

> \relative is documented clearly enough that anyone who asks "Why is my
> music switching octaves?" is not honoring their side of the contract.
> The notes shift because \relative depends on context; and
> cutting-and-pasting is going to change that context.

We don't demand that musicians refrain from using an instrument until
they understand its physics.  LilyPond is a musician's tool, not a
programmer's tool.

> That said, I fully agree with advising folks who intend on moving
> music around more fluidly to avoid \relative since it adds a
> maintenance chore that would otherwise impede the creative process.
> And there does seem to be an over-reliance on \relative in the
> documentation, to the extent that folks are certainly biased to use
> it.

Well, yes.  We had that discussion a few years ago.  It lead to the
introduction of \fixed and \absolute and some changes in the
documentation to stop \relative from being the only explained and
recommended way of note entry.  But the documentation is a large
document with a large history: until such changes are pervasive enough
to change the "lore", it takes a lot of work and time.

> Largely, I adopted \relative simply because pitches on the treble
> staff would otherwise require at least one apostrophe.  I have
> considered dropping \relative in my own works, replacing it with
> something like "\transpose c c'" so that I can at least minimize the
> use of octave punctuation.

You know \fixed?

-- 
David Kastrup