On Mon, Sep 03, 2012 at 04:10:59PM +0200, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote: > On the one hand I very much appreciate the ideas and proposals, because > they tell me that people really care about our user interface. This is > what people see of LilyPond and so it is easy to identify LilyPond by > it. On the other hand, everything that does not result in a nice patch > is useless. Or worse than useless if it wastes the development time of > David (and the courtesy time of Han-Wen).
I absolutely disagree that "everything that does not result in a nice patch is useless". Think about the Waltrop trip -- I think that the most valuable parts were seeing each other, eating together, talking about cross-cultural issues, looking at scores, hearing about Janek and Rudolfo's typesetting work, our conversation in the garden, etc. Don't get me wrong; all the work that you and John did on GUB was very valuable. But if I had to choose between that set of patches vs. the time we spent on non-programming activites, I would choose the non-programming activities in a heartbeat. I think that fostering a feeling of community is the best way to keep lilypond around for the long term. That said, I _do_ agree that fostering the community is not the *only* goal that should be considered. Not wasting development time is another goal. That's precisely why I thought that "fluffy discussion" should take place on another list. Think back to having breakfast around the kitchen table in Waltrop. Suppose I said "hey, I wonder if we could create some way to help users avoid being confused by whether a \command would apply to the note before or the note after?". I think in that environment, we could casually chat about possibilities without anybody freaking out that I was going to jump into git and push some hacks to the parser. *That* is the type of environment I want to create. I want to retain some of the magic of Waltrop, some of that feeling of *community* rather than an antagonistic "you're wasting my time" or "your patch breaks XYZ" that we see so often on lilypond-devel. > I think that what Han-Wen and David are trying to tell you is: yes, we > could do with some language cleanups. Here's how you can help. Start > working on the parser. Changes small things, make it better. Once you > finally work yourself up to the authority level of Jan, you're probably > still not in a position to propose and judge big changes. But keep up > the good work. Good luck! I disagree. I do not think that musicians have nothing valuable to say. I *especially* do not agree that documentation writers or teachers (in person) have nothing valuable to say. - Graham _______________________________________________ lilypond-devel mailing list lilypond-devel@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel