Re: help

[Graham Percival]

On 30-Jul-04, at 1:42 AM, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> address@hidden writes:
> > What operating system are you using?  And have you read the
> > instructions on the website?  Lilypond is not the kind of program you
> > can use without reading the documentation.
>
> Although I understand this remark, I dislike it, because it points to
> a weakness of ours.

It's only a weakness if one of the stated goals of Lilypond is to make 
it
as easy to learn as possible.  There are many software programs that 
nobody
would expect to use without any study.  (La)TeX is an obvious example, 
but
I'd guess that all high-end research software (math programs, scientific
simulators) are the same.

Programming languages fit into that category, too.  Sure, there's some
programming environments that focus on ease of use -- various education
products, maybe visual basic, etc -- but then there's languages that
focus on power, flexibility, etc.

If Rosegarden/Noteedit/MusE/ any those graphical score editing programs 
(that
also export lily code) run on windows and osx in addition to Linux, it 
might
be better to point newbies at those programs.  Lilypond could focus its
speciality (making beautiful sheet music), and those programs can do 
their
thing (providing an easy-to-learn environment for creating sheet music).

> How much work is installing lily4jedit?  If we can get the new windows
> users to get acquainted with lily through its wizard for score
> creation, I suspect that we could get even more people hooked.

Never having used jedit, nor cygwin/windows, I can't comment on this, 
but it
sounds like a good idea.

Cheers,
- Graham