Re: collision problem

[Graham Percival]

On 8/28/08, Kieren MacMillan <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Is that the best use of my Lilypond volunteer time? I'm an
> experienced programmer (Java, a half-dozen scripting languages, etc.)
> *and* an advanced Lilypond user and working composer — should I be
> teaching myself Scheme and/or C++, and working on the base Lilypond
> code?

In your case*, yes.  Or rather, learn scheme -- don't bother with C++.

1)  learning scheme will help you do fancier things in lilypond, which
may benefit your composition.  OK, not composition itself, but the
engraving process.
A very topical example: consider the \webernAccidentals command in the
snippets for Accidentals.  If you're writing music in that style, then
adding ! to every single note would be a huge pain.  If you were
comfortable with scheme, you could create such things yourself.

ok, maybe not such a great example... ok, the Holst Planets example
from SL Pitches, or Transposing music with the minimum accidentals.
Learn enough scheme to understand and be able to create neat things
like that yourself.


2)  lots of bugfixes can be done in scheme without touching C++.  And
testing new/updated scheme code is a lot easier than recompiling lily
and testing new C++ stuff.


3)  Pick a known bug (there's about 200 to choose from) and see if you
can do it.  If you ask on -devel, then somebody might be able to point
you at some bugs that they're fairly certain are scheme-fixable.

Try to be fairly independent about this -- if developers spend all
their time teaching you the lilypond internals, we're not saving any
time/effort.  The first bug might well take you 5 hours to solve...
but the second one will only be 2 hours, and soon you'll be making a
real dent in the open issues.


[*]  Based on what I've gathered of your interests, time availability,
estimated effort, etc.  I /do/ seriously take into account each
person's quirks and situation when I suggest jobs.


If it were a year ago, I'd suggest docs *for that year* (not
necessarily writing docs; verifying and checking docs is an enormous
job, both in terms of importance and effort required).  But since GDP
is over, I think it makes more sense for you to think about bugfixes.

Oh, if you haven't carefully read NR 6, that might be good... although
it hasn't been touched yet, so I don't know if Trevor wants to hear
about any problems you find in it.  That's up to him... I personally
*hate* seeing complaints about stuff that I know is bad, and which I
intend to completely rewrite anyway.  At any rate, NR 6 is the first
place to begin your scheme investigations into lilypond  anyway.  That
and the IR.

Cheers,
- Graham