Re: developers developers developers

[Jesús Guillermo Andrade]

Graham: I've been on the lilypond list for a long time. Tried lilypond  
many times before but not until recently I began to work with it  
seriously with my academic work. I earn my living as an attorney, but  
I also attend classes at the local Conservatory.
It has been a while since the last time I did anything on lisp... But  
I began to oil my old brain with Mr Sandberg thesis and some Lisp  
manuals I have around. I guess Im getting tired of asking dumb  
questions in the list just because I didnt want to learn a bit of  
scheme-lisp.
Im sure Id like to help the project go on. Please don't quit just yet.  
Im sure there are tons of people reading this thread and your  
dedication and perseverance will not go unnoticed. I hope I can be of  
service soon.

Guillermo


El 12/11/2009, a las 05:08 p.m., Graham Percival escribió:

> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 12:55:08PM -0800, Tim Reeves wrote:
> > Graham wrote:
> > > For the record, **I have never recommended that somebody use
> > > lilypond**.  When meeting a technically-oriented composer,
> > > especially one working on algorithmic music, I might suggest that
> > > they should check it out.  But I think the original poster was
> > > entirely justified in switching back to Finale.
> > >
> > > That's why I cringe a bit whenever I hear people proudly
> > > announcing that they advertized lilypond to meeting X or
> > > conference Y.
> >
> > I'm surprised. What about the beautiful output and flexibility? If  
> > they
> > don't like the learning curve, what's the loss?
>
> I'm not concerned about the learning curve; I'm concerned about
> the mountain of bugs that aren't being addressed.  If somebody
> sees terrible output (say, printing two signatures if there's a
> \partial right before a tempo change, or a beam colliding with a
> notehead (!))... the only answers I can give is:
> - yeah, that sucks.  If you add a whole bunch of arcane commands
>  specific to each instance, you can avoid it.
> - fix it yourself.
>
> The situation is better than it was a few months ago, but we're
> still accumilating more bug reports than we're fixing.  I'm
> concerned that people might try lilypond, encounter a few
> problems, then get turned off because of the relatively unhelpful
> (but honest!) answers.
>
>
> Again, the only solution is to get more people involved.  Is it
> easy?  No, but the only way to make it easier for new developers
> is for more people to join, learn stuff, then write about what
> they learned.
>
> Alternately, I could train them to do (some of) my jobs.  Then *I*
> can go through the pain of learning X, Y, and Z, writing about
> said tasks, so that other people can tackle those jobs while I can
> pursue even harder stuff.
>
>
> But if nobody (or few people... thanks Kieren and Simon!) steps
> forward, then the *current* developers will get more and more
> overworked and stressed out, and start dropping like flies.
> Frankly, I started considering dropping out a month ago, and
> that's looking more and more appealing every day.
>
> Cheers,
> - Graham
>
>
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