Re: how offsets and alignment works: an explanation

[Trevor Daniels]

Noeck wrote Saturday, March 23, 2013 5:55 PM
>
>> This is explained very concisely and without examples in the NR, see
>> http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.17/Documentation/notation/aligning-objects
> 
> I disagree. As an average user, I feel quite lost in this section
> especially with the "two-dimensional" extents.

The Notation Reference is a _reference_ document.  It is intended to
remind users of information which they already understand.  Explanations
belong either in the Learning Manual, the Extensions Manual or the
Contributor's Guide.  We need to be quite strict about this, other the
NR will become far too long.  The pdf version is already 800 pages
long and takes several minutes to download.  That is why we moved 
material into the other manuals.
  
> The CG is too far away from the normal user. I would only put the part
> on scheme functions there.

I'm quite happy to see extensive links to the CG.  These will take you to the
appropriate section just as easily as if they are in the same manual.
 
> »An image tells you more than a thousand words« is a German saying which
> applies very well to this section, IMHO. But I think that lacks at many
> places in the docs: images. They are very text-centred and sometimes an
> image would be much quicke to understand than pages of text. This
> particularly applies to spacing and positioning issues.

That's because we have several blind users.  Images are useless for them.

Trevor