Re: Newbie question

[Hans Forbrich]

Your Question 1:

Historically it has been considerd a bad idea to keep the bar spacing
the same between 'lines', presumably because it is wasy to lose track of
which 'line' you are reading.  Most music publishers/typesetters I have
seen will actually go out their way to ensure the lengths are not the
same.  However, you can make certain adjustments using the "\break"
command to tell Lilypond how many bars (brackets) you have on a line.
Also you may notice the space allocated is influenced by the number of
'note positions'.  So you could come close by having a set of
'invisible' 16th or 32nd notes in each bar and terminating each 'line'
with a \break.

Your Question 3:
Suggestions:

1) Ask away.  This is the only way the documentation writers will know
what is frequently asked so they can adjust the documents based on
popularity of questions.  (I think you'll find that this is one of the
friendlier mail lists around.)

2) Look at the 'examples', the 'regression tests' and 'tips and tricks'
referenced by the appropriate documentation page from
http://www.lilypond.org.  Most popular, and many obscure, constructs
seem to be there so you can look up the style visually and then click on
the file name to see how it's done.  You could use the following
patterns for the links:

 http://lilypond.org/doc/vXXX/input/template/out-www/collated-files.html

 http://lilypond.org/doc/vXXX/examples.html
 http://lilypond.org/doc/vXXX/input/regression/out-www/collated-files.html

 http://lilypond.org/doc/vXXX/input/test/out-www/collated-files.html

(replacing vXXX with v1.6, v1.8, v1.9 as appropriate)

3) Experiment.  I have yet to see anything in the input that will break
Lilypond.  (Things may not run or work the way I expect, but it won't
actually damage the computer or the program!)

4) Search the Lilypond archives - a convenient search field is on the
http://www.lilypond.org page.
 Hope this helps
/Hans