Re: GUI

[Mats Bengtsson]

Graham Percival wrote:
> > A couple of comments on the text at  
> > http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.13/Documentation/web/text-input#Text-input:
> >
> > You never mention that you need a text editor.
> >     
>
> Well, the windows and OSX lilyponds come with their own text
> editor.  I admit that I'm just assuming that linux users will be
> able to draw the inference that they need a text editor, which is
> no longer a safe assumption.
>   
Looking at the download page for Windows, I notice that you say "If you 
are happy with the GUI", but don't say anything else about how to find 
this GUI. Perhaps the installation instructions should end with a link 
to the Learning manual 1.1.3. Actually, the current installation 
instructions are almost over-emphasized on the current web page. These 
steps are the same as for almost any other Windows application so I'm 
not convinced we need to comment on them. It's much more important to 
focus on the things that are not common to a Windows user, namely how to 
use the program. Once you add command line instructions, the focus of 
the web page will be even less on the important stuff.

Answering your earlier question "Pretend that you've never heard of 
lilypond. Does the webpage answer the questions, or present the 
information, that you wanted to know before you got involved?", I would 
say: definitely no!

Think of a Windows user who wants to try LilyPond. She will click on 
Download, quickly locate the Windows logo and click on that and probably 
miss the "Note: ..." at the top of this intermediate page. Then, she 
directly finds the link to the installer since it's nicely located at 
the top of the column, perhaps takes a quick look at the rest of the 
text while the download is going on, just enough to see that it looks 
exactly like all other installation instructions and then runs the 
installer. Now is the moment that she might end up as a "where's the 
application" question mark and there's no information at all on the 
download page that's open in the browser. What's the next logical step? 
Try to click on "Introduction". Again, no information on how to run the 
program, unless you happen to look below the title "Why *not* to use 
LilyPond?" where you have to click on "Text input" -> "Learning" -> 
"Learning manual" -> "Tutorial" -> Compiling a file" (what is 
"compiling"?) -> ...
Seriously, how can you expect anybody to find this crucial information?

At the Windows download page, I would propose to remove all the current 
information, except the link to the installer, and replace it by the 
nice introduction with screen-shots. At the bottom of the page, you can 
add links to a separate page with the current detailed installation 
instructions and command line instructions.

Similar comments apply also to the Mac page.

I have not followed all emails of this thread, so I apologize if all 
this has already been said earlier.

    /Mats