I first review trends in current solar spectrometry and then concentrate on
comparing various spectroscopic diagnostics of the solar chromosphere. Some are
actually not at all chromospheric but just photospheric or clapotispheric and
do not convey information on chromospheric heating, even though this is often
assumed. Balmer Halpha is the principal displayer of the closed-field
chromosphere, but it is unclear how chromospheric fibrils gain their large
Halpha opacity. The open-field chromosphere seems to harbor most if not all
coronal heating and solar wind driving, but is hardly seen in optical
diagnostics.Comment: To appear in "Recent Advances in Spectroscopy: Astrophysical,
Theoretical and Experimental Perspectives", eds. R.K. Chaudhuri, M.V.
Mekkaden, A.V. Raveendran and A. Satya Narayanan, Astrophysics and Space
Science Proceedings, Springer, Heidelberg, 2009. Revision: references
corrected, new references added, minor text correction