On 10/14/2012 07:36 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Please, can we get away from thinking in terms of implementation details
and instead think of the use cases:
1) Just set a property (grob or context property) to a certain value,
don't worry about previous values
2) Set a property to the defaults
3) Temporarily set a property to a new value, being able to switch back
after a while
4) Switch back to a previous value
Good view point. However, trying to think as a regular user, I see no
point in distinguishing between use case 1) and 3). Why should I need to
distinguish between a setting that can be reverted and one that cannot?
To understand the need for difference, I would need to understand at
least a bit of the implementation details, namely that 1) uses less
memory than 3), which is becoming more and more of a non-issue given the
amount of RAM and virtual memory of todays computers.
For many years, I viewed the difference between set/unset vs.
override/revert as just different command names for context properties
vs. grob properties. It wasn't until David first started asking about
the exact differences, that I became more aware of the other
non-symmetries between the commands. It is of course important to
clarify all these details, even if you often can survive using LilyPond
without having to bother about the details.
I haven't followed the full discussion, just browsed through some of the
emails, however I agree with the objections against using "push"/"pop"
as command names, since they only really make sense to those of us who
have an M.Sc. in computer science and not to a musician. Surely, we can
have a quick introduction to the concept of stacks in the documentation
(for example comparing to a deck of cards) but conceptually, the names
"override" and "revert" make at least as much sense for the layman and
even if the names at least currently are slightly misleading, the
analogy is still much better than some other analogies used in computer
interfaces (the Mac concept of dragging the disk to the waste basket in
order to eject it, comes to my mind as a terrible analogy).
/Mats
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