hurdles for contributors (was: help wanted, I mean it)

[Graham Percival]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 05:50:54PM -0500, Tim McNamara wrote:
> I'm sorry to say it but there are an awful lot of hurdles to get over in 
> learning to use LilyPond and then even more in trying to contribute to 
> it. I think I see why there are fewer contributor than Graham and Patrick 
> etc. would like:  being a contributor comes with a learning curve that 
> many of us just do not have time to master.  I think there'd be more 
> contributors if contributing was a simple process (and not so 
> Linux-centric): installing git and all its myriad dependencies, learning 
> texinfo, etc.  I simply don't have time for all that.  I'm happy to write 
> text, revise text, proof-read etc. for the Web site and the docs, but I'd 
> submit anything in text or HTML.

I've bitterly cursed the move to git ever since it happened.  :(

I don't mind asking contributors to learn a bit of texinfo, since
95% of the time, they don't need to actually use any texinfo
commands; they can just edit the text in the file.  And, as
Jonathan pointed out, the most important thing is the plain text;
some people (like him) are willing to add any special texinfo
formatting required.

During GDP, I didn't require people to use git; I provided them
with texinfo source files.  They edited the files (again, mostly
just the text, while ignoring the special commands), then I took
care of the git side.  It wasn't _too_ much work, although I
wouldn't want to be doing it on a regular basis.  But if there was
a limited-time X-month project, I might do it again.


Trevor Daniels might have an interesting opinion on this; he's
another retired British windows user, who started off during GDP
(and has said on multiple occasions that he would have never
started contributing if he had to use git).  Now he's on git (he
wrote the "git on windows" section.

Cheers,
- Graham