Re: Beam positions and time signature spacing

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi Gilberto,

2013/11/11 Janek Warchoł <address@hidden>:
> 2013/11/11 Gilberto Agostinho <address@hidden>:
>> David Kastrup wrote
>>> It also sends out a more serious variant of the message "this is
>>> important to me" without the accompanying "so this should make you want
>>> to do the work".  It's in general much easier to get something done by
>>> doing it than by telling others they should do it.
>>>
>>> And sometimes you'll find that you can make them do most of the work
>>> anyway by asking "how would I do this?" rather than "why don't you want
>>> to do this?".
>>
>> Look David, I deeply dislike the tone you are using now. I find it extremely
>> offensive to be accused of being lazy and simply trying to force people to
>> do things that "are important to me".
>
> Gilberto,
> you misunderstood David.  I know him long enough to be 100% sure that
> this is a misunderstanding: he most definitely didn't want to imply
> that you were lazy or trying to force people to do things for you.  He
> was just giving you some advice.

A bit of background: from time to time, enthusiastic LilyPond users
(similar to you and me in some regards) appear on the mailing list and
begin discussing LilyPond bugs and issues that are bothering them.
They are often right that LilyPond does something wrong.  The problem
is that they often try to _make_ developers fix these issues asap.
Since developers don't like it when they are _demanded_ to do
something, frustration appears.  The easiest way to reduce chances of
developers getting angry and the users getting frustrated is to
encourage users to get involved in actual fixing of the problems.  So,
David was just trying to give you advice "in advance".  I suppose his
intentions were exactly the same as mine when i wrote

2013/11/11 Janek Warchoł <address@hidden>:
> PS if you could investigate spacing alists (this shouldn't be hard)
> and make a proposal of how exactly they should be changed, that would
> be very good.  Discussions about concrete proposals *with* the code
> change are much different than discussions without the code.

Maybe David didn't formulate his thoughts in the best possible way,
but in any case i'm sure that he didn't want to accuse you of
anything.

I hope that my explanations made the situation a bit clearer.


2013/11/11 Gilberto Agostinho <address@hidden>:
> - Most of my recent posts on LilyPond are about suggestions, improvements,
> standards etc. . I always add in the end of my posts that "I am not looking
> for a solution, I know how to solve this on my own scores via tweaks, I am
> merely trying to improve LilyPond" or something similar.
> - I write about things that I don't even use myself on my music. Since I am
> constantly trying out codes on LilyPond (for pure enjoyment), I may come
> across bugs/problems/ideas that are not even remotely relevant to my work at
> all. But I still spend my time creating PNG and LY files, writing posts,
> discussing, etc.
> - I am able to engrave my own work in a very satisfactory manner with
> LilyPond. I have my own templates prepared and I use them for everything
> that I write, and this templates includes my style of bar numbers, some
> functions I collected, etc. So as you see, I gain nothing by having some of
> these behaviors modified on LilyPond (I just would then cut some lines from
> my template). I write here because I honestly believe that by changing some
> things, LilyPond can become an even better program.
> - All my posts include clear images of problems and minimal examples
> whenever necessary. I am certainly not the kind of lazy user that posts no
> code and no image, or that paste a code of 2000 lines here.
> - I get nothing, absolutely NOTHING for reading, answering and posting here.
> I consider myself a volunteer here.
> - I am not telling people what they should do. I simply started a discussion
> about notation and what are the best solutions. If people agree on a best
> solution for a certain engraving problem, then maybe it is worth to have it
> implemented. I am no programmer on this level and on this particular case I
> do not know how to improve it.
> - But if you pay attention to my original post, I write "I am not too sure
> if I do agree", "Does anyone knows if what I am saying here is correct?",
> "Could someone check on Elaine Gould's book, or some other engraving book?
> ", "I would be very glad to hear what you all think about this". Clearly I
> am inviting people for a discussion, not to "work for me to solve a
> problem".

Be sure that i do appreciate your effort and attitude (and i apologize
if my earlier emails didn't make such impression).  I cannot speak for
David, but i suppose he also appreciates that.


2013/11/11 Gilberto Agostinho <address@hidden>:
> Janek Warchoł wrote
>> Please don't get disheartened by this discussion - i believe that what
>> you're doing is valuable (i do agree that LilyPond's spacing between
>> clef and notes with many accidentals needs adjustment).  In fact, you
>> remind me of myself a few years ago :-)  Just be aware that when
>> discussing engraving practices with LilyPond devs it may be not enough
>> to have an engraving book that agrees with you to win the argument :-)
>
> Hi Janek, I have no problems on losing an argument. In fact, I don't see
> this as a win/lose situation. I started this post by clearly inviting people
> to discuss, and I never said that I was right on anything. The fact that a
> book I respect stated something that supports my initial idea does not mean
> that this has to be implemented or is the only solution. I have no problems
> with people saying "no you are wrong and we shouldn't implement that because
> it is worse". Thanks for your message and thanks for seeing these posts as
> valuable.

You're welcome! :-)

best wishes,
Janek