Re: pygment regex question

[Lukas-Fabian Moser]

Hi Jean,
> FWIW, the last one
>
> a4_boringly
>
> is something I wouldn't do, since
>
> a_boringly
>
> does not work

Yes, d'accord.

> Personally, I tend to leave out # when possible for numbers,
> and also leave out #' for symbols when possible because it
> is not only shorter, but allows the syntax highlighting program
> to highlight them specially if they're built-ins, be it
> in Frescobaldi or in the documentation via Pygments.
> On the other hand, I usually use " marks (but not # when
> not required) around strings, because I might want to add
> spaces in them, and once again because it makes the syntax
> highlighting more useful.
>
> For \new Staff = <this>, I never settled my mind :-)  It
> expects a string, but then one could argue that accepting
> a symbol here would more sense.

I see it mostly from a "didactical" perspective: LilyPond syntax is 
hermetical enough as it is (if you're looking at it from a 
non-CS/Math/... person's perspective), and having to write #' is just 
something that I want to avoid having to explain and justify to my 
musician colleagues as long as possible.

It may be trivial, but to me,

\override NoteHead.color = red

actually lowers the barrier immensely compared with

\override NoteHead #'color = #red

- of course that's more than one syntax simplificiation here, but it 
shows how much David's improvements have improved accessibility.

But, as I said before: Making everything seem perfectly simple (no #, no 
', no "") is bound to put the user in a situation sooner or later where 
things are not so simple anymore, and we have to explain why they need 
to use additional symbols in their specific case. But in any case, I'm 
much more inclined to explain about string delimiters "" than about #'.

Lukas