Re: bounties

[David Kastrup]

Joseph Wakeling <address@hidden> writes:

> On 06/20/2010 06:10 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
>> People want a _solution_ to their problem, not new problems they never
>> thought about and which are not actually in their personal problem
>> space.
>
> That's true, but it only shows that Lilypond isn't yet capable of
> operating as a general-purpose best solution.  That's only a problem
> if that's what Lilypond wants to _be_, or more precisely, what
> Lilypond tries to sell itself as.  ('Wants to be' is fine as long as
> you have a plan to get there and don't sell yourself as such
> prematurely...)

You wish.  It is a problem when Lilypond is the best tool for the job
and/or the cheapest.

> It's a bit like GNU/Linux a few years ago, and to an extent even now
> -- it wasn't possible to market it as a general-purpose operating
> system suitable for all, because learning to use it involved an
> expenditure of effort that only made sense if you had a deliberate
> motivation.  That might be ideological/philosophical, it might be the
> opportunity for hacking and customization, it might be that it
> provides better for your particular technical needs, but whatever it
> was, you _needed_ that self-motivation.

Well, by now everybody and his dog writes diatribes how Stallman and the
Free Software Foundation and free software are on the road to total
failure and need to make themselves indistinguishable from those systems
for which they provide alternatives.

It takes a Stallman to keep course even when in the middle of a
popularity shouting contest.

If your tool becomes superior not because of its principles and
philosophies, but just because it's the best way to arrive at the end
result, everybody will tell you that the way you arrive at the end
result is wrong and needs replacement.

Even if the end result would not have been reached by other means.

>> You can't stop at selling Lilypond to somebody without having an
>> answer to "how do I start this thing"?  How many people are
>> complaining that they double-click on the Lilypond icon and nothing
>> happens?
>
> Hmmm ... so why not start by having the icon open a 'Quickstart' help
> page that explains how to use Lilypond on the platform in question?
> Trivial to implement, no?

For each given platform.  Separately.  Sounds like employment for a
number of platform-localized frogs.

One way of evading the question is to make a compellingly good user
interface on Emacs (which then runs everywhere), but that's not exactly
a small task to do.  And there are people who would balk at
"compellingly good" in the same sentence with "Emacs".

-- 
David Kastrup