Re: Plan for discussions

[Janek Warchoł]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 4:04 PM, Graham Percival
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Spent yesterday wandering around Kloten, the "old town" part of
> Zurich, and looking at stain-glass windows.  Spent this morning
> walking along Uetliberg, a series of hills right next to the city.
> Travel advice: skip the city and culture, just go straight to the
> Alps.  Ok, maybe Uetliberg isn't high enough to qualify as "alps",
> but the basic idea is the same -- cities aren't worth the trouble;
> the vertically-based wilderness is the place to be.

Sounds like a nice vacation :)

> We need an avenue for structured discussions.

+1
If we don't discuss them in an organized way (and preferably once and
for all), they'll keep appearing all the time.

> In June, we will begin GOP2 discussions with the same format as
> last year

+1
i suggest to discuss some communication guidelines, for example "don't
say <It's settled then> until there's more than 1 day of discussion
and not all concerns have been addressed, even if you think that the
decision is obvious".
Also, how do we treat partial/imperfect/temporary solutions?  For
example, in the documentation we are using s1*0 now, which has some
side effects.  <> doesn't have them, but looks somewhat cryptic.
Ideally, a special command would be created, but this requires time,
work and discussion, while <> is already working.  Should we accept it
or not?

> In July, we will begin GLISS,

As i wrote in a private e-mail, whoah!

> almost certainly in the same format
> as GOP.  Initial Discussion questions will try to be as general as
> possible -- for example, instead of arguing if we should have
> \hideNotes vs. \notesHide, we will discuss the general question of
> noun-verb vs. verb-noun command names

Can we discuss bigger changes in syntax, too?  I mean, not just the
naming of commands (of course that's needed), but also the stuff that
is related to how things work inside Lily.  For example syntax for
overriding broken spanners, context-id-specific overrides, etc.

And independently from GLISS, i have an impression that discussing
things over e-mail takes us so much time that there's little resources
left for actual programming.  At least i know that this affects me and
i'm concerned about it; i'm afraid that discussing really big
structural changes in LilyPond (which are necessary imho) over e-mail
will take sooo much time that it'll be very ineffective.  What about a
real-life meeting?  There will be a GNU conference in Dusseldorf (west
Germany) in second half of July, maybe we could meet there for a
couple of days and sort out some big picture stuff?  I think that
discussing LilyPond live for one day will give us better results than
a month of mailing lists discussions.

cheers,
Janek