Re: Do we really offer the future?

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Johan,

> Why should serious businesses use Unix?
> Outcome: they didn’t.

Actually, they do, on quite a large scale: UNIX and UNIX-like servers have a 
~68% market share for public servers. And the share of internal (corporate) 
servers is not insignificant (though not nearly 2/3, of course).

> Why should serious businesses use LaTeX instead of MSO?
> Outcome: they didn’t.

Depends entirely on which “serious business” you’re talking about. I’m about to 
have my sixth number theory paper published by the American Mathematical 
Monthly, a “serious business” if there ever was one; they, of course, required 
the submission in LaTeX, like all reputable journals. My point is, such 
[ultimately rhetorical] questions only make sense in a correct and fairly 
narrowly-defined context.

> Why should serious businesses use Linux instead of Windows?
> Outcome: they didn’t.

Here I fully agree with you… and this is the [analogous] battleground where 
Lilypond’s make-or-break battles will be won or lost. 

> For us, command line driven programming may feel normal

I am completely comfortable with command-line programming. But I *never* use it 
with Lilypond: I only use tools (e.g., Frescobaldi, or even the Mac OS X 
built-in “Lilypad editor") which abstracts all of that for me.

> it will never become broadly accepted

Totally true, of course — and not necessarily a bad thing. Our willingness to 
accept that and give [potential] users what they need to get around without the 
command-line will almost single-handedely determine the degree to which 
Lilypond successfully penetrates the wider market.

> I did some book productions for a big publisher. I convinced them that I
> would be delivering high-quality camera-ready materials. They didn't care
> how I did it, what tools I used, even though my results looked better than 
> theirs.

Unfortunately, that just isn’t the way with music publishers: they almost 
universally demand the “source code” (by which they mean Finale or Sibelius 
music file), which they then manipulate as they deem necessary.

> Bottom line: Let's have fun the way *we* do it. Let's show the world the
> beautiful scores we make. If people wants to join us, let's welcome them
> and guide them patiently through the learning curve. And enjoy.

To my mind, a better bottom line would be to flatten the learning curve 
significantly for [potential] new users without reducing Lily's power, 
flexibility, and beautiful output.

Cheers,
Kieren.
________________________________

Kieren MacMillan, composer
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: address@hidden