Re: Detail question about "Text input" page

[David Kastrup]

Urs Liska <address@hidden> writes:

> Am 13.01.2014 13:03, schrieb David Kastrup:
>> Urs Liska <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> Or is this more the advice "well, we know it's complicated to start
>>> with, but please bear with us and read the LM"?
>>>
>>> I suggest getting rid of the "complaining about bugs" phrase. We want
>>> to be friendly and welcoming, aren't we?
>>
>> It's more like the people reporting as a bug that when they write
>>
>> { f fis f f }
>>
>> that there is a natural accidental before the second f that they did not
>> ask for, and they don't seem to be able to get rid of it.
>
> OK, that's practically what I meant with my second option.

Perhaps something like "well, we know it's complicated to start with,
but please bear with us and read the LM" is too negative.  It sounds
like "we know LilyPond is bad, but it's also good".

How about the following:

The way you tell LilyPond about your music is more like communicating
with another musician over the phone or telegraph than by letter.  For
simple music, this is straightforward.  For more complex matters, you
will first have to establish a common language.

That's what we did.  The hardest part might have been teaching the
computer to talk about music, but we put a lot of thought into that.
What remains is teaching you the language we settled on.  For this, we
wrote the "Learning Manual".  With a bit of practise, you should soon be
on talking terms with the computer, with LilyPond providing the common
language.

> But I think I will propose a rewritten version. I have a few ideas to
> make the situation clearer, at least for those who _do_ read these
> pages.

Well, the above is probably too long.  But I think that it gives a more
positive spin to what people have to expect from working with LilyPond.

-- 
David Kastrup