Re: GDP: new display for warnings

[Hans Aberg]

On 4 Oct 2007, at 02:07, Graham Percival wrote:

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> What do you think of the new warnings in the manual?  In the Learning
> Manual, see
> 2.1.1 Compiling a file
> 2.3.1 Music expressions explained
>
> As always, look at the new docs on
> http://opihi.cs.uvic.ca/~gperciva/
>
>
> I find them quite useful in another project I maintain; should we use
> them throughout the LilyPond docs?

I think you might more words, depending on the contents. A thesaurus  
gives synonyms of "essential":
  indispensable, necessary, requisite, vital, important;
  fundamental, constitutional, characteristic, inherent, basic,  
intrinsic;
  absolute, cardinal, principal, leading, main, capital;
  substantial, material ...
And one can look at other words, "note", to get more inputs.

Looking at
 http://opihi.cs.uvic.ca/~gperciva/lilypond/Documentation/user/ 
lilypond-learning/Compiling-a-file.html#Compiling-a-file
it says:
  Warning: Every piece of LilyPond input needs to have { curly  
braces } placed around the input. The braces should also be  
surrounded by a space unless they are at the beginning or end of a  
line to avoid ambiguities. These may be omitted in some examples in  
this manual, but don't forget them in your own music!
----
In addition, LilyPond input is case sensitive. {c d e } is valid  
input; { C D E } will produce an error message.
----

In a compiler, a "warning" is an intermediate between an "error",  
i.e., something causing the compile to fail, and "info(rmation)". For  
example, a construct that may cause compilation error in a later  
version, or something that may cause the running code to fail, even  
though the construct is legal.

Now, the first part is really a requirement:
  Every part of LilyPond input must have curly braces placed around  
the input
- or else the compile fails. So it is not merely a warning - it is a  
requirement. Also, I changed "piece" to "part", following Church's  
book on lambda calculus, which has a technical definition of a "part"  
of a lambda expression. It seems me, you have a similar syntactically  
closed part in mind here.

The part "These may be omitted in some examples in this manual...".  
Is it the braces or spaces that may be omitted? - Though English  
implies it referes to the braces, it is somewhat unclear. And if they  
are omitted in the manual, is it because there is an error in the  
manual or what?

Just some inputs. :-)

  Hans Åberg