Re: preliminary GLISS discussions

[Graham Percival]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 03:15:08PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Thoughts?  opinions?  alternatives that I haven't considered?
> > These discussions are going to produce a *lot* of emails.
> 
> And if they come to conclusions, they are going to produce effects on
> everybody.  Including people using "LilyPond as a service".

Sorry, I think I was unclear.  If we have a separate email list
for preliminary syntax discussions, then I imagine that something
like the "everything is postfix" idea would go like this:
- initial email to syntax list
  - 10 emails about why it might be useful
  - 30 emails about music functions, including explaining what
    they are, what's the difference between music functions and
    parser objects and maybe a re-discussion of \displaymusic
    and lilypond scheme-sandbox.ly
  - 20 emails about what it would break in existing scores, how
    it might be possible (or not) to write a convert-ly rule, etc
  - 20 emails pinning down an formal proposal, summarizing
    previous emails about the advantages and disadvantages known
    so far.
  ... the above takes 2-4 weeks...
- formal proposal to -devel list
  - 10 emails questioning the summarizes, pointing out advantages
    or disadvantages not previously discussed
  - 20 emails about specific difficulties in implementing the
    proposal
  - 20 emails discussing the trade-offs and whether it's actually
    worth adopting the proposal
  ... the above takes 1-3 weeks...
- actual implementation, pushing to staging
- 1 or 2 stable releases, and/or 6 or 12 months of usage "in the
  wild"
- final adoption as a stable syntax


Every proposal must still come to -devel, and there will be
absolutely no disadvantage to somebody who ignores the
"preparation" emails and only comments on the formal proposal.
It's just the initial 100 emails that I'm suggesting that could
take place on a separate list.

- Graham