Re: GUI

[David Kastrup]

Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:

> The *first* question is "how do we discourage people who don't want
> lilypond from downloading it?"  Some people don't get text input, and
> will never take the time to learn.  Such as my mother, for example.

Yes, that's as important as it is for a violin academy to discourage
learners.  Because violins take a long time to learn.  And lots of work.
And people should be willing to take the worst out-of-tune instrument
and fight through.  Build character.

Sorry, but I don't think our main job is discouraging all the people who
don't want to suffer without reason.  Our main job is encouraging those
for whom Lilypond will pay off eventually.  And that's a lot of people.

People willing to learn a musical instrument and music enough to bother
about typesetting their material are not molded from the same material
as potato couches in the first place.

I've found when working with Emacs and LaTeX and their ilk that there
were at times contributors, high quality contributors without computing
or natural science background, and without interest in it.  If you dig
deeper, you'll likely discover that the person gets reasonably well
along with Latin, probably being a historian or even ancient language
philologist.

It helps to remember that evolution is rather slow in cranking out new
models, and thus the top-heavy brainiacs move in other professions as
well.

Don't tell people they won't manage.  Tell them what they _can_ do.  The
trend that everybody should be able to do everything given a computer is
rather new.  Lilypond is not about muddling along.  If you learn how to
tell it _what_ you want typeset, it will do an excellent job at putting
the instructions to work.

Like a good musical instrument puts your intent into music.

There is a price to pay.  If you go into your local hardware store,
you'll likely be able to get about two complete "professional" sets of
concrete drills for the price of one 6mm concrete drill of an
established brand.

You'll likely break off both "professional" 6mm drills during the first
dozen holes actually drilled into concrete.  And spend a lot time doing
it, with progress not being noticeably different before and after the
drill broke off.

Yes, there is a price to pay for that one drill that actually does the
job.  And the job we are talking about is professional-quality music
typesetting.

-- 
David Kastrup