Re: Why do so many newcomers post to bug-lilypond?

[Graham Percival]

On Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 12:52:25AM +0100, Francisco Vila wrote:
> http://lilypondwiki.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=Where_is_the_app%3F
> 
> Which sometimes makes me think that the page is sooo bad that no one
> dares to comment it. Does anyone think it could be remotely useful?

Mao.  Why am I always the one to speak the nasty, sensible facts?

- The problem is not explaining how to use lilypond.  We have the
  tutorial for that.  If the tutorial isn't clear, improve the
  tutorial.

- 95% of the people who post "where r teh buttonz" will never even
  try to use lilypond once they realize that they can't do things
  with a mouse, so don't bother trying to explain it to them.

- the remaining 5% can use lilypond perfectly well after reading
  the docs.

- new users neither know, nor care, about the tuxfamily wiki.
  However, it's still useful to have a webpage that you can point
  people to.  But they won't discover this page on their own.


What's the real solution to this?
- when lilypond is run for the first time on windows or OSX, it
  pops up a box that says something like "You must read the docs".
  Or maybe slightly longer, like "To use LilyPond, you must write
  text files which define the music.  To learn how to do this,
  read the docs."  Maybe with a clickable URL in there.
  No, wait; that would require an internet connection.  Dump a
  copy of the relevant tutorial pages (HTML and/or pdf) with the
  installer.

Of course, this requires screwing around with the windows GUI
code, which 1) isn't in the normal git source, 2) is a pain, and
3) requires people to care about windows.


My overall point is this: the solution to "people aren't reading
the documentation" is NOT to add more documentation.

Cheers,
- Graham