Re: improving LilyPond useability

[Renato]

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On Mon, 2 Dec 2013 15:06:13 -0000
"Phil Burfitt" <address@hidden> wrote:

> So often people after buying a new shiny thingy, open the box, plug
> it in, and only after numerous failed attempts to get it to work,
> decide to read the manual

Well they'd hit the same wall with Latex, it doesn't "do" anything by
default, yet still it's the undisputed standard for scientific
typesetting. I'd say that lilypond is more or less as good as Latex
(which is not perfect, it *is* rather messy at times), the great
difference is there is much more interest in Latex so there is
excellent documentation and a lot of community activity.

Now, one could make the argument that the crowd Lilypond has to appeal
to (musicians) is in general far less accostumed to command line
programs rather then Latex's crowd (scientist); I'd argue back that
Lilypond doesn't really "have to appeal" to someone who doesn't see the
advantages of WYSIWYM vs. WYSIWYG and doesn't take the time to learn
it. I mean, lilypond is text-editor + command-line by design, you don't
really get around these programs without reading docs (and you
shouldn't try to make it easy).

So I think "improving lilypond's usability" should boil down to:
1) better language functionality (personally I haven't used lilypond
all that much so I can't really point out any show-stopper there)
2) better docs

and nothing else

my 2 cents,
cheers

renato 
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