Re: Newbie problems

[David Rogers]

Peter Toye <address@hidden> writes:

> Thank you all very much for your help. It's not the most intuitive
> user interface (or should that be language?), and I've only been
> trying it out for a few hours, so I'm coming up with all sorts of
> silly issues.
>
> One problem I'm having is that it's not easy to find things in the
> documentation. As with all language systems,. you spend an awful lot
> of time searching.....

Part of this problem is simply the way Lilypond is. With some software,
the manual is only where you go when you run into trouble, and most of
the time you expect to work without the manual. With Lilypond - well,
let's say you should reserve a permanent space on your screen for the
Lilypond manual, for the next several months. :)

It isn't a fault, it's just the kind of program Lilypond is; because
there are no pictures on the screen to show you what to do, every time
you want to do a new thing, you have to look it up. The more you use the
manual, the more you see how the manual works. You get to know where a
certain kind of information is going to be, so it doesn't take as long
to find it. "Learning Lilypond" really comes down to "Learning the
Lilypond manual", in some important sense.

In short: The Lilypond manual isn't a helpful auxiliary guide, it's the
essential instructions for making it work. Without it, we would all just
sit there staring at a blank screen.

In jest: Lilypond is a program for turning the Lilypond manual into
music. :)

-- 
David R