Re: Discourse

[Werner LEMBERG]

Andrew,


thanks for your long reponse.  I have to correct two of your
statements:

> But (contrary to a false statement I made about import into
> Discourse) you can't import mailbox format lists into Discourse
> simply, because, for example, the creation of users from 25 years
> ago who most probably no longer have the same email addresses is
> very problematic for various reasons.

It's really a pity that such a conversion is not supported, since it
would be extremely helpful in the long run.  However, e-mail addresses
shouldn't be exposed in the web interface (the already existing e-mail
list archive doesn't do that either).  The construction of threads
rather relies on the 'In-Reply-To:' and 'References:' fields, AFAIK.

> Maybe the history of bugs from ten versions ago is not that
> important to have instantly online.

It's not the 'history of bugs' that counts – we have a bug tracker for
that.  It's rather the collected wisdom of tips and tricks, mainly
related to Scheme wizardry, that is so important to look up for both
users and developers.


Werner

Re: Discourse

[Andrew Bernard]

Some final thoughts, since we are not going to do this at this point. 
With all the pushback I am seeing, I have little further interest in 
giving my time and resources to implementing this. To a certain extent I 
regret even bringing up the topic.


People should go back and read my posts as this is in answer to today's 
posts, as I have discussed these points. The way I set up email in 
Discourse it works great, it's one click to subscribe, it has subject 
lines which give the topic and the category for easy filtering, and I 
can see no difference between the the email functionality it provides 
and the functionality that GNU Mailman 2 provides, none. You can 
initiate topics by email, you can reply, you can include images and 
file, it's normal email readable in anything from emacs to your personal 
mail client, all the headers are correct, and if you are careful on the 
admin side and which email SMTP provider you use you can avoid being 
classed as spam and also avoid backscatter (though this takes some work, 
but so it does with mailing lists).


Many of my users use the email interface exclusively and never touch the 
web interface. I have never had a complaint about the inadequacy of 
Discourse email. If people have some issues with other Discourse forum 
email functions, let me know, as it may help me with my forums.


So lilypond will be on GNU Mailman 2 always as far as I can see, which 
seems a pity as the software is advancing rapidly but not the community 
software. In the past, I was mostly successful in importing 25 years 
worth of posts from a LISTSERV mailing list into a GNU Mailman 2 list, 
the same as lilypond. But (contrary to a false statement I made about 
import into Discourse) you can't import mailbox format lists into 
Discourse simply, because, for example, the creation of users from 25 
years ago who most probably no longer have the same email addresses is 
very problematic for various reasons. Therefore the current history 
could not be supported in Discourse, and would have to remain separate. 
I can see that this is a strong objection. But again, insisting on that 
means there is no possibility to ever change. Maybe that's a good thing. 
I don't know. Maybe the history of bugs from ten versions ago is not 
that important to have instantly online.


With regard to country based censorship, my unstated proposal would have 
been to run it on a linux server at Vultr or DigitalOcean and as far as 
I know there is no country filtering or censorship done by those 
services. But I may be wrong.


Interestingly Discourse (and yes people please do not confuse it with 
Discord, and entirely different service) supports polls builtin, so you 
can easily gauge opinion in a community with, but email lists do not 
have a convenient way to do this. :-)


I could go on but I have already asked to drop this topic as we are not 
going to do it, so people can relax. Perhaps the prevailing mood will 
change in the future.


Andrew

Re: PNG file output

[Jean Abou Samra]

Hi,

Please consider subscribing to the list 
(https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user), else your messages are 
approved manually and you might miss a reply if the person merely replies to 
the list without Ccing you. Thanks.


> Le 25 févr. 2023 à 18:33, jschlom...@astound.net a écrit :
> 
> Is there a way to get png output using some internal setting? #(ly: 
> set-option 'resolution 300) works fine, but only if I use the -fpng command 
> line option. I need to set this conditionally in the .ly file. Any way to do 
> this? Should I be looking at guile?


I'm afraid this can't be done without dirty tricks. Output formats are really 
tied to the command line. However, I think this might be an XY question. Could 
you elaborate on why you want to do this?

PNG file output

[jschlomann]

Is there a way to get png output using some internal setting? #(ly:
set-option 'resolution 300) works fine, but only if I use the -fpng command
line option. I need to set this conditionally in the .ly file. Any way to do
this? Should I be looking at guile?

Thank you,

John

Re: Discourse

[Michael Gerdau]

Speaking up as one of the silent majority on this topic, now that 
it's mentioned, as I think I have two cents to add.


Silent majority?

I always thought and still think the Email prefering fraction to be the 
silent majority. But that's just my personal feeling and I do not have 
data to base this claim on.


I looked up the other list that moved to Discourse (I think they had the 
same Discourse/Discord confusion), but I remember that being sold 
strongly on the web interface. I was certainly left with the very strong 
impression email was a second class citizen.


If discourse works well with email, that would presumably allay Omid's 
fears?


I have yet to see a discourse setup that works well with email. 
Discourse seems to be better than phpBB or similar but that's not 
difficult and hardly something to be proud of.


All the claims I've seen w/r to usability of web based interfaces being 
better than email IMO basically show that mail clients are 
insufficiently or not properly setup respectively used.


FWIW I'm very happy that lilypond-users is email based. It is both my 
highest volume and at the same time most productive community.


I dearly hope that it stays that way.

My 0.02€

Michael
--
 Michael Gerdau   email: m...@qata.de
 GPG-keys available on request or at public keyserver

Re: Discourse

[David Kastrup]

David Santamauro  writes:

> Since we’re airing grievances …
>
> The format of the response below is exactly what bothers me most about
> email lists and why I favor forums. The etiquette is to quote what you
> are responding to and remove everything else. Imagine 4 other people
> quoted different parts of the original email, I now have 5 disjointed
> emails going off, perhaps, in 4 different directions. With a forum,
> topics can be split and merged retaining all parts of OP’s initial
> post/email and I can ignore the tangents I’m not interested in.

That seems more like a deficiency of your mail client than of the
principle of mail.  Mails include reference headers used for threading,
and my mail reader (news) arranges mails just like it does nntp (Usenet
et al) postings.

> Secondly, a forum only notifies you when you are part of a thread
> (either started or replied to one) which reduces the email traffic
> tremendously. You aren’t poked with an email every time someone has a
> thought or issue, rather, you instantiate the interaction with the
> forum. Yes, I know digest option is available, but really, who wants
> to wade through an entire month’s worth of emails in one shot.

Again, this points more to a deficiency of your mail client than
anything else.  Automatically sorting list mail into corresponding
folders should be easy enough.

To be fair, I usually read the LilyPond lists via Gmane's nntp mirror.

> Thirdly, from a practical workflow perspective, I would much rather
> scroll through a thread that is on one page than to click n-number of
> emails. Of course, having to click into multiple emails is due in
> large part to my first point.
>
> … and I’ll probably get yelled at for top-posting as well ;-)

>From a practical workflow perspective, I would much rather do all of my
reading using a single keyboard driven interface and application than
have to keep hopping through all-different web interfaces for everything
I am interested in.

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: Discourse

[Werner LEMBERG]

> I looked up the other list that moved to Discourse (I think they had
> the same Discourse/Discord confusion), but I remember that being
> sold strongly on the web interface. I was certainly left with the
> very strong impression email was a second class citizen.

As mentioned already: The most important thing IMHO is that the 20+
years of e-mails to the lists are available at *one* (not two) spots.
This means that someone™ has to import all e-mails into a new
solution, preserving threads and the like.

If this can be done easily with Discourse, wny not.

Another aspect: LilyPond is a GNU project; it would thus useful if
gnu.org could set up a discourse instance.


   Werner

Re: Discourse

[Wols Lists]

On 25/02/2023 13:34, Jean Abou Samra wrote:

Le samedi 25 février 2023 à 16:56 +0330, Omid Mo'menzadeh a écrit :


Hi all,
Speaking up as one of the silent majority on this topic, now that it's 
mentioned, as I think I have two cents to add.
I personally wouldn't be against Discourse, as I find its email 
interface good enough, however, there's something that does worry me 
about such a migration. As I have pointed out on the list before, 
lilypond.org  is hosted on a platform that denies 
access from a few countries (including Iran, where I live), in 
addition to a lot of IP ranges we use to circumvent censorship (we get 
a 403 error.).
If the Discourse forum uses the same servers, that would be a huge 
problem for us. These days I build the LilyPond documentation myself, 
and download it from Gitlab, which at least doesn't block my server's 
IP, but being denied of this mailing list would prove to be hard to 
compensate.



Thank you for speaking up. This is indeed very important.

At this point, nobody is volunteering for setting up a Discourse server 
(Andrew turned back), so the discussion is entirely theoretical, but if 
someone ever does take the time to set that up and push for it, we will 
need to remember this constraint on the hosting used.


One idea - if the main devs are behind it, why not move lilypond-dev to 
discourse? That's a far smaller group that you need to build consensus 
among, and if it works, then you come back to lilypond-user.


I looked up the other list that moved to Discourse (I think they had the 
same Discourse/Discord confusion), but I remember that being sold 
strongly on the web interface. I was certainly left with the very strong 
impression email was a second class citizen.


If discourse works well with email, that would presumably allay Omid's 
fears?


Cheers,
Wol

Re: Discourse

[David Santamauro]

Since we’re airing grievances …

The format of the response below is exactly what bothers me most about email 
lists and why I favor forums. The etiquette is to quote what you are responding 
to and remove everything else. Imagine 4 other people quoted different parts of 
the original email, I now have 5 disjointed emails going off, perhaps, in 4 
different directions. With a forum, topics can be split and merged retaining 
all parts of OP’s initial post/email and I can ignore the tangents I’m not 
interested in.

Secondly, a forum only notifies you when you are part of a thread (either 
started or replied to one) which reduces the email traffic tremendously. You 
aren’t poked with an email every time someone has a thought or issue, rather, 
you instantiate the interaction with the forum. Yes, I know digest option is 
available, but really, who wants to wade through an entire month’s worth of 
emails in one shot.

Thirdly, from a practical workflow perspective, I would much rather scroll 
through a thread that is on one page than to click n-number of emails. Of 
course, having to click into multiple emails is due in large part to my first 
point.

… and I’ll probably get yelled at for top-posting as well ;-)

Bottom line: Count me in for migrating and I also have resources to host it if 
need be.

From: lilypond-user-bounces+david.santamauro=gmail@gnu.org 
 on behalf of Werner 
LEMBERG 
Date: Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 9:37 AM
To: tim...@bitstream.net 
Cc: lilypond-user@gnu.org 
Subject: Re: Discourse

> Additionally, I find value in the archived aspect of web fora in
> which all the discussions remain available in a very convenient
> manner.

If you look at the e-mail fields of any message you receive from the
list, you can see the following

  List-Id: LilyPond user discussion 
  List-Unsubscribe: , 

  List-Archive: 
  List-Post: 
  List-Help: 
  List-Subscribe: , 


We *do* have an archive, with search.


Werner

Re: Discourse

[Werner LEMBERG]

> Additionally, I find value in the archived aspect of web fora in
> which all the discussions remain available in a very convenient
> manner.

If you look at the e-mail fields of any message you receive from the
list, you can see the following

  List-Id: LilyPond user discussion 
  List-Unsubscribe: , 

  List-Archive: 
  List-Post: 
  List-Help: 
  List-Subscribe: , 


We *do* have an archive, with search.


Werner

Re: Discourse

[Tim's Bitstream]



This has been a fascinating discussion bringing up many aspects I would not 
have thought about, having no background in mailing list administration or 
managing an online forum. The discussion of blocked access in some countries 
was eye-opening for me as I did not know that happened.  Blocking access to 
music engraving software hardly seems like it could promote any goals for 
"international security" in any way.

Personally, I find the email based method clunky and inconvenient, even 
anachronistic; if there was a central official web forum, I would 
preferentially participate in that instead. Maybe that stems back to my initial 
Internet experience having been with Usenet prior to the World Wide Web taking 
off.  Thread based discussion with all of the input being available in one 
place immediately just makes sense to me.  Email conversations on technical 
topics which may have many responses just feel piecemeal to me.  Additionally, 
I find value in the archived aspect of web fora in which all the discussions 
remain available in a very convenient manner.  Having a system that could offer 
both is something I did not know it was possible.

In any event, it sounds like change has been averted and we will continue as we 
are.

Re: Discourse

[Jean Abou Samra]

Le samedi 25 février 2023 à 16:56 +0330, Omid Mo'menzadeh a écrit :
> Hi all,  
> Speaking up as one of the silent majority on this topic, now that it's 
> mentioned, as I think I have two cents to add.  
> I personally wouldn't be against Discourse, as I find its email interface 
> good enough, however, there's something that does worry me about such a 
> migration. As I have pointed out on the list before, 
> [lilypond.org](http://lilypond.org) is hosted on a platform that denies 
> access from a few countries (including Iran, where I live), in addition to a 
> lot of IP ranges we use to circumvent censorship (we get a 403 error.).  
> If the Discourse forum uses the same servers, that would be a huge problem 
> for us. These days I build the LilyPond documentation myself, and download it 
> from Gitlab, which at least doesn't block my server's IP, but being denied of 
> this mailing list would prove to be hard to compensate.  


Thank you for speaking up. This is indeed very important.

At this point, nobody is volunteering for setting up a Discourse server (Andrew 
turned back), so the discussion is entirely theoretical, but if someone ever 
does take the time to set that up and push for it, we will need to remember 
this constraint on the hosting used.


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Re: Discourse

[Omid Mo'menzadeh]

Hi all,
Speaking up as one of the silent majority on this topic, now that it's
mentioned, as I think I have two cents to add.
I personally wouldn't be against Discourse, as I find its email interface
good enough, however, there's something that does worry me about such a
migration. As I have pointed out on the list before, lilypond.org is hosted
on a platform that denies access from a few countries (including Iran,
where I live), in addition to a lot of IP ranges we use to circumvent
censorship (we get a 403 error.).
If the Discourse forum uses the same servers, that would be a huge problem
for us. These days I build the LilyPond documentation myself, and download
it from Gitlab, which at least doesn't block my server's IP, but being
denied of this mailing list would prove to be hard to compensate.
Thanks,
Omid

On Sat, Feb 25, 2023 at 2:26 PM Stephan Schöll  wrote:

> Hi Andrew, Jean
> Hi all (on and off thread)
>
> I have followed this thread (and its predecessor re mailing list
> configuration and easening admins' work) for days now.
>
> First of all: Thanks sooo much to all of you who invest hours and hours
> for Lilypond, the community, and all the infrastructure. It's amazing! I
> appreciate that a lot, really!.
> (You even took your time patiently to explain others how to print out a
> web page, which a) should be obvious to internet users today anyway, and
> b) really: who prints out the internet ;-) ? ...a thing we did in the
> last century maybe.)
>
> Andrew, I understand your disappointment re pushback. I haven't set up
> any statistics. But pushback came only from few while I guess there is a
> silent majority that has at least no fundamental objection...
>
> Someone has mentioned that decision taking in communities might be slow
> and tedious. That's right, as long as we (unconsciously) refer to the
> most common decision making patterns: unanimity (consensus) or a
> majority vote. Since moving to a different "community platform" (mailman
> to Discourse e.g.) is something quite fundamental, since it connects the
> community, it's worth building a considerable committment. Sure.
>
> On the other hand side, all of you who work on and around Lilypond take
> one decision after the other do this in a good way. That's probaly why
> Lilypond is so consistent and stable!? (Thanks for the quality :-) )
>
> I liked the thread about the support for including additional image
> formats (svg or pdf?) a few month ago. The author had an idea, asked for
> input and considerations, but finally took a decision on his own
> considering the feedback he had gotten. It was a perfect example of a
> a) individual consultative decision or
> b) decision by consent (vs. consensus! -> no fundamental objections came
> up during consultation process)
> Those decision making approaches are way faster. But a community has to
> agree in which cases they are appropriate or not of course.
>
> Summary and encouragement from my side: Those who invest time and money,
> proudly feel free to decide. It's impacting your work and life most!
> Others can follow if they like. If the don't, it's up to them.
>
> ...just my 2 cents, ending by coming back to my introduction: Thanks to
> all the contributors! Go on! Don't let yourselves be pulled down :-)
> You're doing a tremendously valuable and great job!
>
> cheers
> Stephan
>
> On 25.02.2023 11:26, Andrew Bernard wrote:
> > Of course it's my opinion, shared by 30,000 other communities that have
> > selected it, which is not too bad.
> >
> > Anyway, we are not doing this, so further discussion is pointless. I am
> > surprised by all the pushback.
> >
> > Andrew
> >
> >
> > On 25/02/2023 8:51 pm, Paul Hodges wrote:
> >>
> >> I guess that's your opinion - however, my opinion is that the forums
> >> which I follow that have switched to Discourse are less convenient to
> >> use as a result, so I visit them less now.
> >
>
>

Re: Discourse

[Andrew Bernard]

Of course it's my opinion, shared by 30,000 other communities that have 
selected it, which is not too bad.


Anyway, we are not doing this, so further discussion is pointless. I am 
surprised by all the pushback.


Andrew


On 25/02/2023 8:51 pm, Paul Hodges wrote:


I guess that's your opinion - however, my opinion is that the forums 
which I follow that have switched to Discourse are less convenient to 
use as a result, so I visit them less now.

Re: Wondering if there's a way to not just hide N.C symbols, but have them not erase "current" chord.

[Jean Abou Samra]

Le samedi 25 février 2023 à 01:33 -0600, Matthew Probst a écrit :
> Yes, you are correct.  I've not been as careful in my typing as I should be, 
> in my overexcitement and joy at getting a great answer so quickly.  I'll try 
> to compose my Emails better in the future, sorry if I offended.

No problem, typos just happen. I was just trying to prevent misunderstandings.


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Re: Discourse

[Stephan Schöll]

Hi Andrew, Jean
Hi all (on and off thread)

I have followed this thread (and its predecessor re mailing list
configuration and easening admins' work) for days now.

First of all: Thanks sooo much to all of you who invest hours and hours
for Lilypond, the community, and all the infrastructure. It's amazing! I
appreciate that a lot, really!.
(You even took your time patiently to explain others how to print out a
web page, which a) should be obvious to internet users today anyway, and
b) really: who prints out the internet ;-) ? ...a thing we did in the
last century maybe.)

Andrew, I understand your disappointment re pushback. I haven't set up
any statistics. But pushback came only from few while I guess there is a
silent majority that has at least no fundamental objection...

Someone has mentioned that decision taking in communities might be slow
and tedious. That's right, as long as we (unconsciously) refer to the
most common decision making patterns: unanimity (consensus) or a
majority vote. Since moving to a different "community platform" (mailman
to Discourse e.g.) is something quite fundamental, since it connects the
community, it's worth building a considerable committment. Sure.

On the other hand side, all of you who work on and around Lilypond take
one decision after the other do this in a good way. That's probaly why
Lilypond is so consistent and stable!? (Thanks for the quality :-) )

I liked the thread about the support for including additional image
formats (svg or pdf?) a few month ago. The author had an idea, asked for
input and considerations, but finally took a decision on his own
considering the feedback he had gotten. It was a perfect example of a
a) individual consultative decision or
b) decision by consent (vs. consensus! -> no fundamental objections came
up during consultation process)
Those decision making approaches are way faster. But a community has to
agree in which cases they are appropriate or not of course.

Summary and encouragement from my side: Those who invest time and money,
proudly feel free to decide. It's impacting your work and life most!
Others can follow if they like. If the don't, it's up to them.

...just my 2 cents, ending by coming back to my introduction: Thanks to
all the contributors! Go on! Don't let yourselves be pulled down :-)
You're doing a tremendously valuable and great job!

cheers
Stephan

On 25.02.2023 11:26, Andrew Bernard wrote:

Of course it's my opinion, shared by 30,000 other communities that have
selected it, which is not too bad.

Anyway, we are not doing this, so further discussion is pointless. I am
surprised by all the pushback.

Andrew


On 25/02/2023 8:51 pm, Paul Hodges wrote:


I guess that's your opinion - however, my opinion is that the forums
which I follow that have switched to Discourse are less convenient to
use as a result, so I visit them less now.

Re: Discourse

[Paul Hodges]

From:   Jean Abou Samra  

Did they switch from a mailing list, or from other forum/discussion software?
Other forum software; e.g. Steinberg previously used phpBB which they had set 
up well (it's free and well-known, but a maintenance nightmare, as I know from 
working with it).  I've not tried the email approach to Discourse, as in any 
case I prefer the structure enforced in forum sections and threads.  Also, the 
structuring available for threads in mail clients is only one level, and varies 
so widely that it can't be seen as universally useful.


As a forum administrator for many years (recently retired), my preference is 
for the free Simple Machines forum software - but I do acknowledge that it is 
now "old fashioned" (I've not yet tried its recent major update though).  I'm 
not saying that Discourse is bad, either - just that I personally dislike it in 
comparison to many alternatives.


The forums I've been most involved with are fast losing ground to Discord 
[sic]; but the convenience of a forum arrangement for structured access to old 
"archived" information and discussions blows Discord out of the water - it is a 
system for rapid conversation and nothing more.


Paul

Re: Discourse

[Jean Abou Samra]

Le samedi 25 février 2023 à 09:51 +, Paul Hodges a écrit :
> **From: **   Andrew Bernard   
>   
> > I did a major investigation
> > of other free forum programs and it pretty clear that Discourse is
> > superior to all, 
> 
> I guess that's your opinion - however, my opinion is that the forums which I 
> follow that have switched to Discourse are less convenient to use as a 
> result, so I visit them less now.  

Did they switch from a mailing list, or from other forum/discussion software?


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Re: Discourse

[Paul Hodges]

From:   Andrew Bernard  

I did a major investigation  
of other free forum programs and it pretty clear that Discourse is  
superior to all, 

I guess that's your opinion - however, my opinion is that the forums which I 
follow that have switched to Discourse are less convenient to use as a result, 
so I visit them less now.


Paul