Re: Absolute Beginners

[John Mandereau]

Hi Bonnie, Hi Manuel,

Bonnie Rogers wrote:
> Hi Manuel,
> 
> I felt the same way you did about the wiki, but I took a few minutes 
> late last night to check it out, and I found that it really is quite 
> friendly and easy to use. I may not have figured out everything, but I 
> had no trouble setting up an "account" for myself and doing a couple of 
> minor edits. The wiki is new and hasn't been used much, but I can see 
> its potential for us Lilypond users. There is a section called 
> "Tutorials" all ready for you to insert your Mac OS version of Chapter 1 
> of the "Absolute Beginner's Guide."  If the powers-that-be agree,I 
> really think the wiki would be a better place to improve and expand 
> Lilypond help for beginners on various operating systems.

Of course (see the end of the email).

>   I might have 
> some suggestions  for a Windows version of the "Absolute Beginner's 
> Guide", but I know that what I would have to say would be of no interest 
> to the main Lilypond users list except perhaps to give the Linux people 
> a chance to snicker.

Ummh, I'm not sure about this; some GNU/Linux distributions become so
easy to install and use these days...


> I would hope that if we succeed in developing a good set of "Absolute 
> Beginner's" information, the main users list and the main Lilypond 
> documentation would cross-reference to it as appropriate.

In my humble view, LilyPond documentation section on the wiki (like
Tutorials and examples stub) is only a temporary host: it is intended to
collect all documentation that we can't integrate immediately into
official docs. This is the case of the "Absolute beginners" tutorial.


> I also think that it would make better sense to use the wiki for 
> discussions of pedagogy and word usage in various languages. My own 
> academic training was in literature and in education rather than in 
> musicology, so I personally find these topics fascinating, even when the 
> language in question is Spanish, which I have never had an opportunity 
> to learn, but I suspect that many readers of the main list do not feel 
> the way I do and may resent the way language discussions are swelling 
> the volume of emails.

That's not a big problem as long as everybody uses email correctly:
appropriate subject, appropriate use of the Reply-to(-all) function of
one's email client, inline replies. This is not true on this list


>  On the wiki, one could set up separate discussions 
> of pedagogy, English musical terms, Spanish musical terms, German 
> musical terms, French musical terms, and so forth. Wiki users can choose 
> which of these discussions to follow instead of having to sort through 
> everything.

It is possible to create a Spanish-speaking list, just like the French
-- see http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user-fr/
One topic of this list is debating translation, like some LilyPonders
are currently doing for Spanish on lilypond-user. Administrating and
moderating a list is not too much work, only filtering on average 3
spams a day and 3 valuable email from non-suscribed users a month.


> If M. Mandreau agrees, perhaps he could help get the process started by 
> copying some of these threads from the main list into the wiki, and then 
> those of us who are interested could try it and see how we like it.

This would be a very time-consuming job, which looks like
http://lilypond.org/web/devel/participating/newsletter-editor
Such stuff is highly welcomed on the wiki.

>  If 
> you gave permission, Manuel, maybe M. Mandreau would insert a copy of 
> the "Absolute Beginners Guide" into the wiki for you. Editing the wiki 
> was easy, but so far I didn't figure out how a user would go about 
> inserting something completely new.

To create an empty page, write a link to it in an existing page, like
this:

[[new page name]]

then save the page, click the red link "new page name" and click the
Edit link: you're ready to edit the new page!

You don't have to ask permisssion to edit anything on the wiki; if you
feel the need to discuss it first (or after, it is never too late), use
the Discussion pages. Before you contribute, it's better (but not
mandatory) you've skimmed through all the wiki to have a global view and
you've read the guidelines.

Please, don't ask me the permission to contribute any more! Just do it!
There is almost no protection against anonymous edits.


Cheers,
-- 
John Mandereau <address@hidden>