Re: Serious feedback and improvement headroom

[David Kastrup]

Urs Liska <address@hidden> writes:

> Am 11.04.2014 00:51, schrieb David Kastrup:
>
>> I want to be able to draw up some score of mine in ten years and
>> print new versions of it using the version of LilyPond I'll be using
>> then.  I've done a mediocre job of ensuring that regarding the
>> stability of LilyPond's syntax, but a pretty good job regarding
>> convert-ly to mop after any changes.
>>
>> That's what's important to me.  At the current point of time, this
>> may well imply scores below publishing quality.  But it is a rare
>> case when they are not playable.
>
> OK, that's what _you_ see in LilyPond, for your purposes. That's
> completely valid, and it's even more valid to spend your worktime for
> that goal.
> But if you take that perspective seriously you actually say that
> LilyPond will and should only be really useful for professional work
> in some distant future when we might have managed to make it "Do the
> right thing" automatically.

No, I am saying that LilyPond _is_ only useful for some professional
work under some standards with lots of manual work defeating its design
goals.

> But LilyPond can already be used for professional publication work
> today - although that requires manual tweaks.

A scythe may well be by far the best thing I have in the house for the
purpose of cutting bread, just because it has a sharp edge.  It's still
not a bread knife.  Asking a smith to serrate its edge for better
cutting will buy you raised eyebrows.

> What you are saying is what I've been lobbying everywhere too
> recently: That you can create usable performance material with no (or
> neglectable) manual post-processing, and that you can do the whole
> process of (scholarly) editing of a score without bothering with
> engraving details until the last moment before publication. But that
> doesn't reduce the necessity to create publication quality scores too,
> and that can't wait until the 12th of never.

LilyPond does not change through the amount of doomsaying.  It changes
by work done on it.

>> It's a strawman anyway.  That I can only manage a finite workload is
>> not a matter of ideology.
>
> Hm. There are two things to that: first: We're not talking of _your_
> workload concretely.

So who is going to rearchitecture LilyPond for partial compilations?
You can convince yourself of anything, but somebody is going to have to
do that work.  And I consider it a mistake to organize your dreams and
expectations and lobbying around the assumption that it can and will be
done.  You are developing a plan and strategies, and they need a few
things to fall into place at a future point of time.

-- 
David Kastrup