Sorry for the post in triplicate. Gmane's response time confused me. Kieren MacMillan <[email protected]> writes:
> Hi David, > >> I think that sums up very well why somebody would prefer not working >> with Lilypond. Not only do you have to rely on expert advice, but the >> main advice is "please do what an expert would do, or shut up". > > Please show me where I said anything resembling "shut up"...? Well, I omitted the other option "or whine on". My fault. More pointedly: for every question I asked, you basically replied: could you please answer this question yourself and contribute the answer? And that, while a popular way to stifle contributions, is not a reasonable expectation. The first stumbling steps don't teach you what the best way to walk is, and how to teach others to walk. >> If there is no reasonable way to become an expert > > As we both (all) know, there IS a "reasonable way to become an expert" > at Lilypond No. A _reasonable_ way to become an expert is by reading into increasingly more expert-level documentation and working with it. "Humanly possible" is not the same as "reasonable". "Reasonable" entails a collective effort not to repeat avoidable work and frustration. >> Now I am in the situation of being an expert _programmer_. If you >> had actually bothered taking a look at recent postings of mine, you >> would have noticed that I am trying to get some functionality into >> Lilypond. > > I *have* "actually bothered taking a look at recent postings" of yours > — in fact, I thoroughly read almost every post on this list. Hence, I > had noticed that you are contributing, and was therefore wondering > aloud if you would be adding more functionality to solve the > problem(s) you were highlighting — specifically, I wondered if you > were able [technically] to do so, I am able to create functionality. I am not able to guess what the Lilypond way of adding this functionality would be. I don't like doing work that does not benefit others. I don't like incoherent interfaces and bad code. I don't see how I can avoid doing those. I am not interested into prodding Lilypond to accidentally produce output that matches what I need. I want Lilypond to understand straightforward instructions in its Lilypond way to get the output I want. For that I need to understand the Lilypond way of doing this, and the available information is not sufficient. "Please create this information" does not make sense, since there presumably _is_ something like coding style or idea behind Lilypond, and guessing from code is unreliable. > and might be doing so in the near future: “Any chance you can/will > improve it?” I can't improve what I can't see or understand. >> if there is roadmap, design and vision, I have not yet been able to >> find it in the obvious places I have been looking for. > > Then I think that needs to be fixed — suggestions on where in the > documentation this roadmap/design/vision should be? The internals documentation should likely spell out the layers of C++, Scheme, Music macros and what one can hope to reasonably implement in what layer. What new functionality requires equivalence of new engravers or performers, can one implement them in Scheme, does one need C++, and what exactly does one _do_ when creating them? The extending documentation should point people to what kind of stuff they need to consider for adding things like chords, lyrics, general bass, tabs and so on themselves: what layers need to be meddling with for what task, what will work only with recompilation, what might work with Scheme code. Give a sketch of the layout of some existing functionality in Lilypond, and what one would need to add it if it did not exist. >> I don't see that anything is gained for chastising me for my >> impression. > > Once again, I ask you to please point out exactly (with quotations) > where I “chastised” you... since I clearly didn't intend to, I want to > know how to avoid having my intentions misinterpreted in the future. If a posting does not contain anything except "please contribute this yourself", it is not likely to cause anything but annoyance. The topic was why people find Lilypond too cumbersome to use. I gave reasons, and the reaction "please change it yourself" is not addressing the topic at all. It also delivers the impression that the current state is basically my fault and responsibility, and nothing needs to be done about it that I don't do myself. -- David Kastrup _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
