Re: Support for controlling MIDI expression (issue 114500045 by address@hidden)

[James]

Hello,

On 06/08/14 10:18, address@hidden wrote:
> Reviewers: J_lowe,
>
> Message:
> On 2014/08/05 09:12:06, J_lowe wrote:
> > This has now been approved, I assume you still have push access so if
> so make
> > sure you push to HEAD:staging and not directly to master.
>
> Having been just an occasional small contributor, I believe I've never
> had
> direct commit access to the code repository (nor have I ever felt that
> I'd
> really need or deserve it because of the same reason).  I've certainly
> never set up a Savannah user account for making commits as described in
> Section 3.4.10 of the Contributor's guide.  However, I'll be happy to do
> this
> if it will make things easier in the future - should I thus go ahead
> with
> setting up a Savannah account at this point?

I don't make the decision who has commit access but if you do want it 
someone hopefully will pipe up here on this list. But if you do have a 
git formatted patch I can push it for you.

> > Also, as I indicated in the Tracker, does this require any additional
> > documentation in the Notation Reference (sections 3.5.x) and if so can
> you make
> > a new tracker perhaps or send some suggestion to the bug list so it
> gets picked
> > up for the future additions.
>
> From reading Chapter 5 of the Contributor's guide I get the impression
> that the
> proper way to document this feature is to submit an LSR snippet since
> any
> real example of using the new feature will likely depend on a Scheme
> helper
> function such as the one shown in the Tracker issue.
>
> Documentation about this feature would likely fall (at least from a
> technical
> point of view) under the list of context properties mentioned in issue
> 3601, so
> it would be best to document this one along with those.

Yes that probably sounds like it does need a snippet as we try not to 
get too detailed with Scheme functions in the main documents - that's 
not to say we don't ever and a snippet is better than nothing. Whether 
we include the snippet in the Notation Reference depends on how complex 
it is and/or how likely it is that a general user may want/need it. It 
will after all appear in the snippets document anyway.

But that is a decision mainly for the documentation editors.

> However: you mentioned in the Tracker comment that the MIDI section of
> the
> Notation Reference is going to be reorganized.  Does this reorganization
> already include many extensions to the current documentation? Should I
> wait
> for this reorganization to be completed before suggesting anything?
No, suggest what you like- but put it in a tracker (or send it to Bug 
list so a tracker can be opened), my re-org project is not adding any 
new information to the section as such but mainly it will involve a 
restructuring of the order of the current information and hopefully, a 
tightening up the text.

So with regard to Scheme helper functions, there are a couple listed 
already in the current notation reference which I am intending to turn 
into snippets as well.

> The reason why I'm asking is that I fear that any documentation about
> the MIDI
> context properties alone will easily be just too technical to be useful
> without
> adding more details also to the existing documentation about how
> different
> LilyPond concepts relate to MIDI: how MIDI channels work in LilyPond
> (for
> example, the existing documentation about MIDI channels doesn't mention
> the
> midiChannelMapping context property, which is however significant in
> understanding the potential caveats in using the MIDI context properties
> of
> issue 3601 and this issue) and how LilyPond's handling of dynamics
> relates to
> the technical concepts of controlling volume in MIDI (especially with
> the new
> MIDI expression context property; see the tracker issue for some
> technical
> comments).  Therefore, instead of starting to suggest changes to current
> documentation on MIDI, it would probably be better to wait until after
> the
> section has been reorganized (especially if this reorganization already
> adds
> new documentation).  Anyway, I'm ready to try adding some new
> documentation about the context properties (which I'll likely send to
> the bug
> list instead of changing the Texinfo sources myself, however).

Yes it sounds like it would be better sent to bug and we can then 
incorporate it.

Thanks that is helpful.

James