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Re: Feature request


From: Tim McNamara
Subject: Re: Feature request
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2010 09:06:27 -0500


On Oct 27, 2010, at 8:05 AM, Valentin Villenave wrote:

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Robert Clausecker <address@hidden> wrote:
Hi guys!

Greetings,

As we have a good support for SVG now, wouldn't it be nice to add a
--svg switch to the program, so that you can write

   lilypond --svg fancystuff.ly

instead of

   lilypond -dbackend=svg fancystuff.ly

which seems to be less intuitive?

Wait a minute. Let me get this right: you are targeting users who
 - know how to use a command line
 - know what "SVG" is.
 - know what a command-line argument is
- know that a multi-character argument is usually introduced by a double-dash.

...

I think we can safely assume that this kind of users *also* tend to
know what a program's Documentation is, and where to look for it.
What do you think?

I know, that there's a special backend for SVG, but it should make it
simplier for sporadic users who don't read the doc to figure out which
parameter you have to use.

Well, I do believe that "sporadic" is the appropriate word here :-)


Hmm. This is prompting a rather harsh reaction from me which will predictably draw all kinds of flames. I am always bemused by the recurrent user-dismissive attitude that pervades Unix-based FOSS projects: "Whaddya mean you don't want to use a kludgy command and you want something neat and elegant instead?"

We've got a bunch of arcane stuff in Lilypond, which is why we have four PDF files of documentation with a total of 1205 pages (for 12.2.3), about 200 of which you have to read before you can produce your first page of basic music and about 600 of which you have to read to be able to produce well-developed pages of music. Some stuff is just downright goofy, like Lilypond moving a coda mark which should be at the end of the line to the next line if a \break is present- or, for that matter, having to write:

\mark \markup { \musicglyph #"scripts.coda" }  instead of \coda

Lilypond has a lot of outstanding strengths and produces the best- looking scores of any music program I have seen outside of Linotype. It's a wonderful program, but why the resistance to making it easier to use? I have talked at least a dozen musician friends into checking out Lilypond and every one of them told me it was way too hard to deal with. The initial learning curve looks more like a wall to people who aren't familiar with computer programming or a markup language like HTML or TeX/LaTeX. If you want musicians to use it, it has to be reasonably intuitive.





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