Re: Old LilyPond versions

[Graham Percival]

On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 17:37:16 +0200
"Valentin Villenave" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Thank you very much for these comments. I do think we need to talk
> more about this issue.

Oh, has it been six months already?  ... yeah, I guess it has.

No, we most certainly do *not* need to bloody talk about this
issue.  We "talk" about it approximately twice a year.  We,
collectively, spend about 20 hours "talking" (reading/writing
emails on the subject).  And at the end of all that "talk",
absolutely nothing changes.

Here's what will happen (or has already happened):
- some people complain about a lot of old projects that convert-ly
  doesn't handle.
- other people point at a famous work created with lilypond
  1.something, which has only required X minutes of manual
  tweaking to make it run on modern lilypond.
- a certain grumpy doc writer points out that if you read the
  instructions in
  LM 5.1 Suggestions for writing LilyPond files
  then you can avoid almost all these problems.
- a certain grumpy organizer points out that nobody has
  volunteered to work on convert-ly or its docs.
- some people complain that they "don't have the time" to do this
  themselves, but it's still "very important".
- I call BS; if something is "very important" to you, you can find
  an hour a week to work on it.  Unless you're a world-famous
  brain surgeon or something like that, you can find an hour a
  week.  And if you're really *so* busy that you can't afford that
  much time, then you're not reading this email list anyway.

To elaborate the final point: of course we all judge how to spend
our time.  Some commitments are more important than others -- if I
had a girlfriend, I'd spend way less time on lilypond.  If I had a
baby or young child, I'd probably stop contributing entirely.

I'm not criticizing anybody who decides that helping improve
convert-ly isn't important.  I mean, *I* certainly don't think
it's worth *my* time to work on it!  However, be honest.  If it's
not important enough for *you* to work on, then don't expect it to
be important enough for "somebody else" to work on.  This is a
volunteer project.  All the reasons that you have for not working
on convert-ly can apply equally well to the rest of us.


...
That said, if anybody *does* want to help out, either with
convert-ly itself, its documentation (ie listing problems which
require manual attention)... or really, anything else... then I'd
be happy to hear from you!

Unless you're Valentin.  He's doing too many things as it is, and needs
to do those things better, not add more tasks.

Cheers,
- Graham