Re: lilypond manual intro

[Trevor Daniels]

Karl Berry wrote Friday, September 07, 2012 11:45 PM

> I start at http://lilypond.org/website/manuals.html.  It says:
>  Text input: LilyPond is a text-based music engraver. Read this first! 
> 
> Ok, I go there (http://lilypond.org/website/text-input.html).  And the
> example looks quite complex, what with numerous colors, arrows, etc.,
> etc.  Not what I want to show my mom.  And furthermore, the text there
> says "our beginner documentation covers everything at a much more
> gradual pace".  True enough.  So maybe manuals.html should not say to
> "read this first"?

A valid point to make, but we do it this way because many people
are looking for a GUI music engraver and this (hopefully) dispels any
mis-conceptions early.  Then if they still are interested they are
directed to the first 'real' manual.
 
> Anyway, ok, so I go back to the manuals page and go to "Learning" and
> eventually (half a dozen links later, but fine) to "Simple notation"
> (http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.16/Documentation/learning/simple-notation).
> 
> The first example there looks good (and is in fact what I sent her).
> But then the second example, instead of showing how to typeset other
> kinds of notation, goes into \relative.  Is this really the next thing
> people want from a tutorial?  I would have expected to see how to choose
> a different clef or time signature or type of note or ... anything but
> that.

Again, a reasonable point to make, but as pretty well all the following 
examples are in relative mode and as this is usually the best one for
beginners to use it seemed best to get this out of the way early, rather
than teaching absolute entry only to ditch it a few pages later.
 
> On another front: it seems suboptimal to me for that url to embed the
> version number.  It means that when I give out the url, it is basically
> never going to change.  What I really want to give out is the "current
> tutorial" url, to take advantage of whatever improvements get made.

That's because there are always (at least) two versions of LilyPond
available - the latest stable with an even number (14, 16) and the
latest development with an odd number (17).  Best stick with even
numbers at this stage.  They change quite slowly.

> Anyway, just passing along these observations FWIW ...

Many thanks!

Trevor