Re: User vs Developer: Round 2 (and half-time?) (was: Re: music font)

[Janek Warchoł]

Dear Xavier,

hereby i'd like to thank you for your time spent on helping LilyPond!
It's true that user's work often is not appreciated enough.

2012/1/23 Xavier Scheuer <address@hidden>:
> Dear Graham, dear Developers,

> why I never *demand*
> developers to fix an issue, even if it is one that is really annoying
> my ego in almost every score I typeset.  Sometimes when an issue has
> been unfixed for years and when I see people often being troubled by
> this issue I post a message stating it and thus moving this issue "from
> the bottom of the pile".

One thing comes to my mind: you are talking about bugs that annoy many
people, and they waste a lot of your own time.  Have you considered
organizing a collective bounty to fix that bug?  If i remember
correctly, David is interested in working on Lily for money; there may
be others.  If you find 20 people annoyed by a bug and each one gives
10$, that's something!
For example i'm interested in sponsoring bugfixes and new features,
but there's no way i can afford to hire someone myself (200-500$? i'm
a student!).  But i'm definately interested in giving 10$ for each of
the bugs that affect my Lily workflow.

> My main goal was to
> attract attention to Emilio's nice project of music font with LilyPond.
> I attracted Graham's attention on me instead.

Well, you asked for Graham's attention when you cc'd him.  I think
cc'ing him was a mistake, because:
- his function as administrator means that he won't do stuff like this
(help someone with music font)
- he clearly declared that he won't even try to talk other people into
doing anything.
Thus, no point in cc'ing Graham - expect for being

> bitten by the red ants' queen!

That's not a surprise.  Graham's sensitivity is well-known, especially
in this context.  I know that you didn't want to offend Graham (i
wouldn't be offended if i were on Graham's place), but nevertheless
Graham felt offended.  The only thing we can do about it is to write
e-mails in a way that not only seems polite to us, but also will be
received as polite by Graham (or whoever the recipient is) - it's
hard, i know.
(actually i think things would be easier for Graham if he were less
sensitive, but it's his choice and he can do whatever he likes - even
if it's difficult for us)
Recently i seriously offended David without intentions to do so at all
- it was also a miscommunication :(

cheers,
Janek