#4792 Documentation - clarification of #t, ##t, "true", etc.

[Palmer Ralph]

Discussion: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2016-03/msg00128.html

Blöchl Bernhard and Urs Liska wrote :

Setting myself into the situation of a maybe user wanting to switch
off the pagenumber I would google "lilypond pagenumber". Google is
correcting me to page number (in correct English written separately).

The first hit is
LilyPond Notation Reference: 4.1.6 Other \paper variables
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/notation/other-paper-variables

and there I can find
\paper variables for page numbering
and eventually land at

print-page-number
If set to false, page numbers are not printed.

What to do now as a simple minded user?
print-page-number = false
print-page-number = "false"
etc. .....

The second google hit is
3.2.4 Reference to page numbers
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/notation/reference-to-page-numbers

Being familiar with lilypond ##f might find my attention - or not. But
that link is not really helpful. To get the syntax I would have to
google again ....

I would recommend to add the options a user has to any item in the
chapter (maybe in other chapters as well)
4.1.6 Other \paper variables
in the actual example that would mean
print-page-number
default is ##true. If set to false (##f), page numbers are not
printed. Example of use:
print-page-number = ##f

Is there any adress to send this as a recommendation to the manual
editors? It is not a bug so I think the bug list is not the correct
address?

I agree that the use of the words "true" and "false" in that context is
suboptimal and will confuse users who are still struggling with "false",
"#f" and "##f".
I'm not completely sure what the best resolution is.

[Federico Bruni]

• Description has changed:

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+Discussion: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2016-03/msg00128.html
+
 Blöchl Bernhard and Urs Liska wrote :

 > Setting myself into the situation of a maybe user wanting to switch

• status: New --> Accepted

[Phil Holmes]

An alternative view on this. On the stable manuals page, we describe the learning manual as "a “must-read” gentle introduction to LilyPond". The implication is that this should be read before trying other approaches. If I look in the "must-read" manual, the first mention of #t is in 3.3.4, where it decribes a "true" value as being #t, and is also clear that any value used in a set statement must be prefixed with a #. using set x = true is written as set x = ##t. I don't think this can be any clearer, and I'm not convinced we should duplicate what is already clear in the LM across various other parts of the manuals. As has often been said, they're too big already. The underlying problem here is assuming that Google searching is the best way to solve LilyPond syntax problems.

[David Kastrup]

Well, learning LilyPond is not the same as solving a hard Sudoku puzzle. That the manuals only support one conclusion when filling in the blanks does not mean that everything is fine. Google searches are not really authoritive about the manual quality, but if several of them fail to turn up anything useful, this might point towards the information being spread a bit thin. Not least of all because we use similarly functioning search boxes on our own manual pages.

Of course, if the information can also not be found in the indices, this should be even more cause for concern. At any rate, "false" contains more letters in the result than @code does.