Re: Feature request

[Tim McNamara]

On Oct 27, 2010, at 10:53 AM, Valentin Villenave wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Tim McNamara  
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 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?"
>
> I'm afraid you didn't get the point I was trying to make.
>
> I am precisely the one who has recently been spending ONE full-time
> BLOODY WEEK just to make sure that in 2.14 people won't have to type
>
>    \include "italiano.ly"
>
> but something like:
>
>   \language "italiano"

Nifty!

> So, believe me, I'm with on you on the "intuitive, neat and elegant"
> side. (Which makes Graham's answer quite ironic indeed.)
>
> What I did mean, however, is that your average user doesn't even know
> what SVG is, let alone how to obtain it. If we *did* open a feature
> request, if anything, I'd make it a bit more ambitious: why limit
> ourselves to SVG? For example, how come that one has to type -fpng and
> not --png? How come that tagline isn't automatically disabled, and
> mogrify -trim isn't invoked automatically when compiling short
> examples? etc.
>
> And finally, as you pointed out (and rightfully so), there are quite a
> few other areas where we could, and should, be more user-friendly.
> Some of which may be more pressing than the SVG backend. (Which
> doesn't prevent us from opening a feature request in the tracker right
> now, granted.)

Thanks for the excellent reply, Valentin.